Bar 40 Media

What’s This About Compliant Code?

Today (or yesterday by the time anyone bothers to read this, if anyone does) I was on Twitter reading a conversation between Alan Bleiweiss and Ed Lewis about Matt Cutts mentioning at SMX West that W3C compliance isn’t something Google really pays attention to.   From following both of their commentary, they both believe compliant code matters.  But that’s where the disagreement begins.  While Mr. Lewis believes it does affect SEO, Mr. Bleiweiss doesn’t seem to so much – especially without evidence.

While whether or not compliant code is important – and whether or not it should be – is an interesting debate,  to me what’s more interesting is why Google would or wouldn’t pay attention to it.

Back in the day when I was just getting into search engine optimization, one philosophy that’s always stuck with me was that Google doesn’t like “SEO’d” sites.  If it looked like things were optimized, then there was a chance it could send up a red flag to Google and perhaps (the word “perhaps” being important) have a negative effect on rankings.  Of course, back then the keywords tag was still something everybody used, the Google Dance had nothing to do search conference schmoozing and it was assumed that Google hated SEO (which is something else Mr. Cutts spoke about today at SMX West).

Looking at the SERPs, it’s pretty plain to see that code compliance isn’t that important for rankings.  I would argue at any given time, more than half of the top 10 listings don’t have 100% compliant code.  But that’s not what I’m getting at.  Whether you believe Matt Cutts or not, regardless of your views of Google as friend or foe, it w0uld seem Matt is telling the truth – they don’t care about that kind of stuff.

Or do they?  After all, if one of Google’s goals is to bring you a better internet, and they’re including page load times as a part of their quality score for Adwords, it only makes sense that W3C code compliance matters.  And as Mr. Lewis points out, even if compliant code isn’t a part of any of their algorithms, it can certainly influence other aspects of it. Furthermore, if a webmaster is working hard to make sure a Web site has compliant code, it shows they’re dedicated to the success of that site and not just setting up a quick turn and burn site.  That site is likely going to be around for a while gaining links and trust from the search engines.   Ergo, compliant code matters and Mr. Cutts is feeding us a line.

However, looking at it from my old “don’t make it look SEO’d” point of reference, the other argument  makes sense.   After all, who’s going to make sure they have the best code for getting their pages ranked?  An SEO.  And, from Google’s POV, who’s more likely to game the system to make a not as relevant page rank – an SEO or some random guy who set up a site about kittens wearing monocles?  The SEO.  Granted, who the hell is going to be looking for kittens wearing monocles?

I think the real point is this – Google isn’t making money off of code.  No one is clicking on a site, running it through a code validator and thinking, “Oh my! This is some compliant code!  How HOT is that?”  Of course not.  Google is in it for the content.  And if you’re “selling” content, are you going to get hung up on whether or not the code is compliant?  Probably not, unless the site is so incredibly slow that a visitor hits the back button (yeah, yeah, yeah – this feeds into Mr. Lewis’ argument), they could give a damn about code as long as you have relevant content.

Obviously, looking at the argument from a content-only angle discounts all the other important factors.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Google is making their money off of content provided by others.  And that’s probably why for now, and for a while into the future, validated code isn’t going to matter as much as other areas such as judging popularity or the quality of content.  So, Matt is probably telling the truth – Google doesn’t care about Web sites having W3C validated code.

What do you think?