« Google 'Big Daddy' Search Test | Reinforcing Ideas and Improving Relevance to Gain Better Rankings »
January 27, 2006
Google Presents Results of Study on Web Authoring Statistics
by Richard Drawhorn
Google recently analyzed over a billion documents published on the internet, to gain some insight into which web authoring techniques are most widely used. One thing discovered in this study is that errors in the formatting of meta elements is quite common, a fact that underscores the importance of HTML code validation.
Google's analysis of web authoring statistics reveals a number of interesting statistics about the popularity of various web authoring techniques. These include which HTML elements are used most widely, as well as the attributes for each type of element.
One key point made in Google's study is that a large number of meta elements markup errors were discovered. Although the meta keyword tag is largely ignored by search engines, the meta description tag is not. A markup error in a page's meta description tag can have a negative effect on the page's ranking because the element will be ignored. To make matters worse, the description that appears below the page title in the search results will be the first few lines of text on the page, which may not describe the page very well. It's important to use the meta description tag to provide a concise description of your page designed to attract a visitor.
In previous Marketposition.com articles (like Why You Should Validate Your HTML for example), we have emphasized the importance of validating the HTML code of your web pages. Google's finding that many pages published on the internet contain errors in their meta elements underscores the importance of code validation.
Improperly formatted HTML code is not always obvious. Web browsers are often forgiving of coding errors and still display the page correctly. Search engine spiders, however, may not be as forgiving as a web browser with respect to coding errors. As described above for meta elements, an improperly formatted element will be completely ignored by search engines. Depending on the type of error, the problem may be severe enough to prevent the spider from parsing the page altogether. This is obviously something to avoid if you wish to be listed in search engines.
I recommend using using a validator like The W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure your HTML code is properly formatted before publishing your pages. Working out the bugs in your HTML code is not exactly an enjoyable activity, but it's time well spent.
← What is this?
