Re: [WSG] SEO, Semantics, and Web Standards

[Jono]

I've always been fascinated by the search results for for certain words 
on Google.  Sometimes it is hard to tell - by viewing page source - why 
the top result is in fact the top result.  For exampel, try searching 
for  "Fried Chicken" on Google.  Take a look at the top two results, 
and then take a look at their code.  You'll discover that Number 2 is 
much worse than number 1, which is not very good to begin with.  If 
clean code has anything to do with SEO, this is definitely a good case 
study.  The third result has the worst coding of them all... I'm not 
sure how it even made it to number 3?

There is also a lop-sided brand competition between the top two ( see 1 
& 2 in Google search results for  "Fried Chicken" ), which probably has 
a lot to do with it as well.

On Feb 24, 2005, at 7:48 PM, heretic wrote:
So can I hear it from the experts (ie: you guys) what the truth behind
SEO really is. Are semantics worth anything?
Well, it's hard to find the hard data to back this up... but what does
come up consistently is this: semantically-correct markup will improve
rankings. I can't say definitively how much it will improve, but it
does seem to work :)
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