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Posted by Kent Feiler on February 10, 2007, 10:11 am
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If I understand the general direction of recent posts, the idea is to
improve the quality of html/css by soliciting help from the various
browsers. Browsers can certainly detect problems but they have no
sensible place to report them and no way to prevent the same problem
from happening over-and-over in multiple sites around the world. That
idea simply doesn't work.
But how about this one. Suppose we have all of those search engine
spiders do a cursory html/css edit check while they're creeping around
on the internet, and not post items with errors into their search
files. Or perhaps flag them on their lists as having errors.
This has some things going for it. It would prevent bad html from
being disseminated all over the world; it would inform the authors of
the bad html that they have a problem, and it would encourage them to
fix their problem since that's the only way anyone will be able to
find the kernels of wisdom they wish to share with the world.
The negative from the search engine point of view would be that the
spiders would take substantially longer to analyze a given file. There
may be a positive for them as well (Other than that warm glow inside
when they just know they're doing the right thing!), they would be
delivering a better product to their customers. If someone selected a
item from a Google list they could be fairly sure it wouldn't end up
being a pile of pointy brackets and wall-to-wall text.
Regards,
Kent Feiler
www.KentFeiler.com
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Posted by Andy Dingley on February 10, 2007, 10:27 am
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> But how about this one. Suppose we have all of those search engine
> spiders do a cursory html/css edit check while they're creeping around
> on the internet,
Interesting idea...
This would be a solution to a problem of authors not knowing if their
sites were invalid. However the real problem is that authors don't
_care_ (or even understand) if their sites are invalid. If someone
cares to check, it's not hard to tell. This "spider validation" idea
just doesn't solve the real issue.
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Posted by Adrienne Boswell on February 10, 2007, 1:29 pm
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Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Andy Dingley"
>> But how about this one. Suppose we have all of those search engine
>> spiders do a cursory html/css edit check while they're creeping
>> around on the internet,
>
> Interesting idea...
>
> This would be a solution to a problem of authors not knowing if their
> sites were invalid. However the real problem is that authors don't
> _care_ (or even understand) if their sites are invalid. If someone
> cares to check, it's not hard to tell. This "spider validation" idea
> just doesn't solve the real issue.
>
>
Actually, I am one of the few that does care, and I have seen good
results from it. For example, I live in Glendale, California, and I am
Catholic. What would be important to me? To find out when mass was in
Glendale. If I Google for mass glendale, I am greeted by first two
results that are not applicable, and the very next, Holy Family Catholic
Community happens to be a site I developed. Pretty good for 1,080,000
results - 3rd, and 1st relavent result.
I haven't used any "black hat" methods, or Merlin wizardry, just clean,
valid markup.
--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share
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Posted by Henri Sivonen on February 10, 2007, 12:16 pm
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> But how about this one. Suppose we have all of those search engine
> spiders do a cursory html/css edit check while they're creeping around
> on the internet, and not post items with errors into their search
> files.
That wont work, because most Web content is erroneous but still useful
to users. Search engines compete on the usefulness of their results, so
excluding useful results that have errors that browsers are able to
silently recover from would be a very bad business move.
> Or perhaps flag them on their lists as having errors.
Not a new idea. This has been discussed relatively recently on the
WHATWG list, for example (even though the discussion was off-topic
there).
This wont work, because flagging erroneous pages would mean that the
vast majority of search results would have an error flag next to them
adding clutter to the search UI. A person performing a search isn't
primarily interested about the spec conformance of the pages.
> This has some things going for it. It would prevent bad html from
> being disseminated all over the world; it would inform the authors of
> the bad html that they have a problem, and it would encourage them to
> fix their problem since that's the only way anyone will be able to
> find the kernels of wisdom they wish to share with the world.
Search engines aren't in the business of putting perpetrators of bad
HTML on the stocks.
> There
> may be a positive for them as well (Other than that warm glow inside
> when they just know they're doing the right thing!), they would be
> delivering a better product to their customers.
Why would having an error flag next to just about every search result
item constitute delivering a better product to their customers?
--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Mozilla Web Author FAQ: http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html
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Posted by Kent Feiler on February 11, 2007, 9:27 am
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wrote:
> But how about this one. Suppose we have all of those search engine
> spiders do a cursory html/css edit check while they're creeping
> around on the internet, and not post items with errors into their
> search files.
That wont work, because most Web content is erroneous but still useful
to users. Search engines compete on the usefulness of their results,
so excluding useful results that have errors that browsers are able to
silently recover from would be a very bad business move.
> Or perhaps flag them on their lists as having errors.
Not a new idea. This has been discussed relatively recently on the
WHATWG list, for example (even though the discussion was off-topic
there).
This wont work, because flagging erroneous pages would mean that the
vast majority of search results would have an error flag next to them
adding clutter to the search UI. A person performing a search isn't
primarily interested about the spec conformance of the pages.
> This has some things going for it. It would prevent bad html from
> being disseminated all over the world; it would inform the authors
> of the bad html that they have a problem, and it would encourage
> them to fix their problem since that's the only way anyone will be
> able to find the kernels of wisdom they wish to share with the
world.
Search engines aren't in the business of putting perpetrators of bad
HTML on the stocks.
> There may be a positive for them as well (Other than that warm glow
> inside when they just know they're doing the right thing!), they
> would be delivering a better product to their customers.
Why would having an error flag next to just about every search result
item constitute delivering a better product to their customers?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, eliminating results for bad markup is a bad idea, but there are
likely a lot of variations on the thought of flagging bad markup. How
about something like a 1-10 rating where 1 = total crap and, of
course, 10 = the markup version of Bo Derek. As a user, if you had a
choice of two relevent items on a Google list, you might make your
choice on the basis of the markup score.
Would that motivate authors to improve their markup? Anyone in this
newsgroup who got less than a 10 would be horribly embarrassed, but
for others, it's hard to say.
Regards,
Kent Feiler
www.KentFeiler.com
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