Do search engines care about valid html

Like most web developers, I’ve heard a lot about the importance of valid html recently. I’ve read about how it makes it easier for people with disabilities to access your site, how it’s more stable for browsers, and how it will make your site easier to be indexed by the search engines. So when I set out to design my most recent site, I made sure that I validated each and every page of the site. But then I got to thinking – while it may make my site easier to index, does that mean that it will improve my search engine rankings? How many of the top sites have valid html? To get a feel for how much value the search engines place on being html validated, I decided to do a little experiment. I started by downloading the handy Firefox HTML Validator Extension (users. skynet. be/mgueury/mozilla/) that shows in the corner of the browser whether or not the current page you are on is valid html. It shows a green check when the page is valid, an exclamation point when there are warnings, and a red x when there are serious errors. I decided to use Yahoo! Buzz Index to determine the top 5 most searched terms for the day, which happened to be “World Cup 2006”, “WWE”, “FIFA”, “Shakira”, and “Paris Hilton”. I then searched each term in the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and checked the top 10 results for each with the validator. That gave me 150 of the most important data points on the web for that day. The results were particularly shocking to me – only 7 of the 150 resulting pages had valid html (4.7%). 97 of the 150 had warnings (64.7%) while 46 of the 150 received the red x (30.7%). The results were pretty much independent of search engine or term. Google had only 4 out of 50 results validate (8%), MSN had 3 of 50 (6%), and Yahoo! had none. The term with the most valid results was “Paris Hilton” which turned up 3 of the 7 valid pages. Now I realize that this isn’t a completely exhaustive study, but it at least shows that valid html doesn’t seem to be much of a factor for the top searches on the top search engines. Even more surprising was that none of the three search engines home pages validated! How important is valid html if Google, Yahoo!, and MSN don’t even practice it themselves? It should be noted, however, that MSN’s results page was valid html. Yahoo’s homepage had 154 warnings, MSN’s had 65, and Google’s had 22. Google’s search results page not only didn’t validate, it had 6 errors! In perusing the web I also noticed that immensely popular sites like ESPN, IMDB, and MySpace don’t validate. So what is one to conclude from all of this? It’s reasonable to conclude that at this time valid html isn’t going to help you improve your search position. If it has any impact on results, it is minimal compared to other factors. The other reasons to use valid html are strong and I would still recommend all developers begin validating their sites; just don’t expect that doing it will catapult you up the search rankings right now.

Make money online now

What are you waiting for? Haven't you realized that the future is in the internet arena whether is be online marketing or simply working for companies that are based and hire online employees. If you don't do it now you may always regret it because sooner or later you will be force to make the switch but you won't be in the driver's seat any longer. So what are the advantages to having the ability to make money online? Well there are several. For one there is increased ability to automate and therefore be working even while, you are sleeping. You also don't have to work in the typical and uncomfortable work environment. You can work when you want and this includes more flexibility to take that needed vacation whenever. You can work where you want--at home, at the library, in the coffee shop, at your cottage, or on your Caribbean cruise. You can also wear what you want, I prefer sweat pants and a T-shirt you might like your bath robe. Other huge advantages to a "make money online" type of job are that you don't have to worry about product whether is be storage, distribution, tech support, you name it. You are most often earning commissions for selling other people's products. You also aren't limited by geography in your market. You can sell to people in Indonesia just as easily (other than maybe language barrier) as to your neighbor. The internet allows you more potential diversity of income than your typical jobe does as well. If one source of income dries up you will typically have 2 or 3 or 4 other sources to fallback on while you repair or replace the first. So this sounds good right? So what are you waiting for? Oh...you think that the initial risk of quitting your job to make money online is too high? Well then don't quit your job! You can easily maintain both a normal job and an internet income at the same time and you will find very soon that you have nothing to fear. What about startup costs? Well depending on how you start some (data entry, surveys, etc.) have very little assuming you already have a decent computer and connection to the internet. Other cheap options include ebay and other online auction sites. So please don't wait, now is your chance to beat the mad rush and at the pace that makes you comfortable.

Cheap magazine subscriptions the perfect gift

Imagine giving a gift to someone you love which can be distributed equally through out the year and he or she can enjoy the gift for a really long time! If that is your idea for a gift, then cheap magazine subscriptions are an excellent way to get started. I this idea sounds new to you, you will be surprised to know that it has been around for quite some time and today there are dedicated websites which cater to such gifting ideas. A person fond of reading will find cheap magazine subscriptions the perfect gift both to give as well as to receive. You can also choose from a wide range of topical magazines and sometimes it is better to gift a magazine to a person on subject matter they do not know much about as that helps in creating a long lasting interest in the magazines. One of the fastest ways to subscribe to a magazine is to do it online. Readers Digest was one of the first magazines (if you can call it that) to popularize the gifting of subscription to friends and family. This trend has caught on since then and it is an excellent gesture as it surpasses the boundary of age. Magazines are available for teenagers’ right up to senior citizens. It is also difficult to choose gifts for people who have everything ( or that is what we think) and magazine subscriptions are something that may not come to mind as a conventional present. The only problem is that the gift should reach the recipient on time!

Social bookmarking a new age in search part 1

This article will be in two parts because Social Bookmarking affects two totally separate and distinct groups of people. They are of course internet users or surfers on one hand and then on the other there are webmasters and blog owners. In Part One, we will focus on the users and surfers. For all intents and purposes, Social Bookmarking sites are not that much different to Search Engines, but they offer users so much more than the traditional Search Engine site. To demonstrate the differences, let’s talk about Google for example as a search engine and how it works compared to Social Bookmarking site such as Furl or Delicious. I don’t have any intention of getting into all of the technicalities here, but more of an overview to demonstrate the benefits of Social Bookmarking to users. With Google, a web site owner purchases a domain, writes a site (let’s say it’s about dog training for the purpose of this example), buys some hosting and puts the site live online. They may or may not choose to submit the site name to Google, but one way or another Google will eventually find the site sitting on the web. Google will then analyse the coding of the site, the keywords used (dog training) and their density in the text and headings, the titles and descriptions for the site and through the awesome power of their secret algorithm place the page somewhere in their index. And guess what? This is all done by a computer that has no regard for the aesthetics of the site, the richness of design or the quality of the graphics used. Quite simply, to some extent it could well be another machine generated site out to make a quick buck with Adsense ads. Social Bookmarking sites on the other hand provide a refreshing change for user oriented search. If you haven’t seen a Social Bookmarking site, go to one of the most popular sites Delicious. (You can’t put links in articles, so search it on Google.) To detail all of the available features at these sites is well beyond the scope of this article. It would require a small ebook. The most important thing to note however is that if you search sites by popularity, this means that they are ranked by the number of users that have them bookmarked and not by some machine. This is people power in action. Real human beings have viewed these sites and considered them good enough to add to their own personal bookmarks. Another very popular site is Furl and for blogs, well you just can’t beat Technorati. You can perform searches on these sites in the same way you would perform a search on Google, but you can have sites ranked by most recent, popularity and tags. The tags are the most interesting feature of these sites. When you go to the tag area, the site will show a “tag cloud”. Your screen will show a range of tags which are in different colors, size and intensity. The larger the tag and the brighter the intensity the more popular the tag is. In order to use a Social Bookmarking site, you need to register, which is free and set up your own account. Then when you bookmark a site in your own account, you allocate it tags, similar to how you set up categories in your browser. But tags provide a much better system because unlike a browser, you can use more than one tag. For example, if you have a category on your browser for clothing and you come across a site, you might well bookmark it and place it in that category. If you’re anything like me and have heaps of categories, it can be easy to forget where that site was bookmarked. But with social bookmarking you can tag the site with “clothing”, “fashion” and “footwear” for example and when you select any of these tags in your own bookmarking area the site will be listed. One of the other great features about these sites is that your bookmarks are with you wherever you go and not just on your own computer. You just have to log on to your account and there they are. To sum up then, social bookmarking is the future of search. It is powered by humans, assessed by humans and voted on by humans. These sites provide a great means of sharing quality content sites so start bookmarking today.