Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

MAMA says HTML standards are ignored

Only a small fraction of all web pages on the internet are HTML standards compliant. This is the conclusion of new research carried out by the developers of the Opera web browser.
 
Opera Software ASA used its structural web-page search engine MAMA, which provides useful information on how web pages are structured, in order to find out just how many web pages passed the W3C mark-up validation test.
 
It discovered that only 4.13% of the pages that MAMA trawled were W3C standards compliant.
 
What's more, only about half of those sites that displayed the W3C validation badge were genuinely compliant.
 
HTML code generated by web development packages was notably plagued by syntax offences, with a pitiful 0.55% of pages created by MS FrontPage passing the W3C validation.
 
Adobe Dreamweaver hardly performed much better, producing valid code for only 3.44% of the pages it generated.
 
Content management systems fared only marginally better, with Joomia generating valid pages at a rate of 6.45% and WordPress reaching the dizzy heights of 9%.
 
Standards compliance makes a positive difference to SEO, particularly because it makes pages accessible to wider range of browsers, including mobile devices.
 
And that means a better user experience and therefore more traffic to sites that keep to the latest W3C specifications.

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