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Does W3C validation matter?

profile picture Posted by Webline ( profile )
Date/time: Sunday, Oct 3, 2010

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To understand what W3C validation is, you should probably understand what W3C is. W3C is short for World Wide Web Consortium, which is an international consortium of experts founded by Tim Berners-Lee, the man that basically created the internet. The general public and the W3C staff work to revise and maintain what are called Web Standards. The W3C has created guidelines for popular languages like HTML, XHTML & CSS to help keep a uniform, standardized way of using and implementing these languages within websites. Validating your site against these standards helps you determine if you are following the W3C guidelines, and if not shows you how to correct your code to do so.

So the questions that naturally arise are, should I worry about it? Will it make a difference in my site? Will I get more traffic and higher rankings? The answers are maybe, maybe and maybe. Your site is more than just what is seen by a visitor in a browser, it is also the code behind it, and if the code isn't properly done, you can not only have display issues in different browsers, but the ability for search engines to spider and index your site can also be affected. Obviously, when we all want high search rankings, every aspect that can be looked at and implemented should be.

Remember that lack of W3C compliancy doesn't mean your site can't be indexed and rank highly, or display as you want it to, it just means that technically it doesn't follow the standards set in the W3C guidelines. But if your site isn't validated, don't lose heart completely. Some of the most popular websites aren't valid, either, as shown below.

Google.com - 67 errors
Amazon.com - 1445 errors
IE Homepage - 134 errors
EBay.com - 228 errors
AOL.com - 588 errors
YouTube.com - 104 errors
Facebook.com - 47 errors
Microsoft Homepage - 174 errors
Hi5.com - 382 errors
Photobucket.com - 43 errors
Flickr.com - 37 errors
Adobe.com - 24 errors

So, if you want to see just where your site stands as far as the W3C is concerned, visit their validator at validator.w3.org/, run your URL through it, and it will give you a comprehensive display of your sites technical errors. What you do as far as your code beyond that is up to you, but if you think your site is suffering from display or search issues, validating your code may just be the trick.


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