KNOWN ISSUE: Hub HTML validation errors and warnings

1. 44

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   I just checked out my SEO Tutorial hub in the w3 validator tool, and it has 35 coding errors and 17 warnings.  This is particularly embarrassing because in that particular hub I discuss the importance of clean, validated coding for success on Google.
   
   Then I checked the hub I just published and it has 37 errors and 23 warnings.
   
   I think some of the problems we are noticing in Webmaster tools for crawling errors are because of these validation errors.
   
   W3 is the World Wide Web standard for programming.  You can check any webpage for free at this link:
   http://validator.w3.org/
   
   I seriously want these errors fixed.

   replyreport
2. 44

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   Matthew, I'm not a programmer but these are coding errors, not sitemap errors.  Please go to the validator link and put in the URL of one of my hubs, or one of yours.

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   1. 68

      Matthew Meyerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I see what you are talking about now.
      I have forwarded this to our engineering team to be addressed.

      replyreport
3. 44

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   Here's just a few of the errors and they have nothing to do with a sitemap:
   
   Line 88, Column 50: & did not start a character reference. (& probably should have been escaped as &.)
   
   Line 88, Column 61: & did not start a character reference. (& probably should have been escaped as &.)
   
   Line 88, Column 68: & did not start a character reference. (& probably should have been escaped as &.
   
   Line 157, Column 18: Self-closing syntax (/>) used on a non-void HTML element. Ignoring the slash and treating as a start tag.
   
   Line 173, Column 570: The border attribute is obsolete. Consider specifying img { border: 0; } in CSS instead.
   
   Line 173, Column 761: The border attribute is obsolete. Consider specifying img { border: 0; } in CSS instead.
   
   Line 231, Column 18: Self-closing syntax (/>) used on a non-void HTML element. Ignoring the slash and treating as a start tag.
   
   Line 413, Column 355: Bad value hub_1_2971854 for attribute rel on element a: The string hub_1_2971854 is not a registered keyword or absolute URL.

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4. 77

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   Use the same W3C Validator tool and go check out a page on Google or Facebook or Twitter or pretty much any Wordpress site .. see the trend?
   
   Strict validation and optimizing for Google are not interchangeable - this has been explicitly stated many times by G reps.
   
   Google does not perform a w3c validation as part of its crawl, nor do its own pages validate.
   
   One can look at the w3c tool "errors" and often find accessibility errors that ARE relevant to whether a page will rank (has its best foot forward, is fully crawlable)- but you are doing your readers a disservice if you wrote that w3c compliance was a necessary ranking factor.

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   1. 44

      Writer Foxposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      That's not what I wrote.

      replyreport
5. 44

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   THANKS!!!

   replyreport
6. 77

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   ah .. "This is particularly embarrassing because in that particular hub I discuss the importance of clean, validated coding for success on Google."
   
   sorry I read into to it to much - you referenced the w3c tool, the words "success on Google" and the occurrence of some arbitrary errors and warnings (so I assumed you were looking for an actual w3c complete pass) and I jumbled that all together into thinking that you wanted to pass the validator because you wrote that it was important!
   
   The first 4 warnings relate to a tracking url from a third party (scorecardresearch) - the service uses a  & rather than the html entity for an ampersand
   
   the next set of css errors stem from how amazon serves up products using a border="0" - its done this for years and it hasnt been valid for years ... can you imagine how many sites use the default code from amazon?   
   
   Another set of errors is complaining that the identifiers that HP is using to track which links are getting clicked ( i think) in the 'related" section aren't in a microformat the validator understands
   
   Pretty minor things - nothing that would disrupt a crawl or affect display
   
   (look at some of the things they do have going - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ … &html= )

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