importance of html validation for indexiation and ranking?

[french dread]

Greetings,
What is the importance of the html validation concerning the indexation and ranking of a website?
If a browser car read a website without errors can I consider that spider will be able to index the document?
or are they more strict?
Ie I have a website without </body>, it is no problem for browsers, what about spiders?
Are some SE more sensitive to source code?

thanks

[french dread]

no answers? is it holydays in usa?

[Blue]

Hi French,

I can't answer your question, but one of the spider experts here probably can.

However, I know there are a few "spider simulators" out there that you could run your bodyless sites through and see what the results are.

Here's one:

http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi

[Alan Perkins]

Don't know for sure, french dread. These things can change on each crawl anyway, and you should always strive to have valid HTML so you appeal to as wide a browser park as possible. I'll give you my opinions.

What is the importance of the html validation concerning the indexation and ranking of a website? Reasonably important. Spiders can tolerate some errors but not others.

If a browser car read a website without errors can I consider that spider will be able to index the document? No. MSIE is extremely error tolerant. NN less so. Spiders less so again (although you don't have to worry about the layout :) )

or are they more strict? It's not that they're more strict, just have less capable error handling.

Ie I have a website without </body>, it is no problem for browsers, what about spiders? That would probably be OK, but I would fix it if I could.

Are some SE more sensitive to source code? They don't all use the same parser, so the answer must be yes.

Bottom line: try to use valid HTML if at all possible.

I know there are a few "spider simulators" out there that you could run your bodyless sites through and see what the results areIt doesn't matter what a simulator makes of it. When you're talking about illegal HTML, one real robot (e.g. Googlebot) may handle it differently to another (e.g. Scooter), and the way that both handle it may change over time.

[rmridgew]

It must be important,
have you noticed the positiontech html validator

[french dread]

thanks all for your answers, i am going to see what can be done to fix it.

give thanks again :)

[Matt B]

One thing that I have in my "bag o' tools" is an old version of Netscape, preferably v.2 or older. If I can browse a site with that crappy thing, i know that any spider can get through.