Dude, My Website Totally Validates. Check Out My Sticker!
Bragging that your website validates according to W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards makes about as much sense as an author bragging that their manuscript has 1 inch margins. Meaning, it tells nothing about the quality of the content. Sure, it’s nice to validate and track down every error no matter how small, but it doesn’t mean anything. I know all the validation Nazi’s out there will take me to task for saying that but it’s true. Almost no one validates. Google doesn’t, and Yahoo and Twitter are full of errors. On the other hand, my website has NO errors and passes easily while Twitter has 95 errors. Does this mean Claytowne.com is 95 times better than Twitter? Only a fool would say so. So if your site doesn’t validate you’re in good company. Don’t believe me? Then go validate yourself!
Oh no, Google doesn't validate!
OMG! Either does Yahoo!
Oh no, not Twitter too! Well I won't be using that site anymore. If they don't care enough to validate their own site then why should I care about them? What losers!
Here are Ten Important Things That Website Validation WON’T be Able to Tell You:
- Your website is spiderable by search engines
- Your on-page SEO factors are strong and effective
- You have good quality inbound links
- The navigation is clean and user-friendly
- The design is attractive and brand appropriate
- It has original content that is clear and compelling
- It has great use of anchor text and calls to action
- You don’t have any typos or grammatical errors
- It has a high conversion rate
- It will make money
In short it will tell you everything except what you really need to know to make your website successful. So validate for fun, but not for profit. Go ahead and put the W3C icon on your site if that makes you happy. Learn good standards and practice them. It definitely won’t hurt and can only benefit you and your website in the long run. But please don’t tell me that just because your code validates it makes your website good. That’s a different matter entirely.
File Under: Website Validation Myths – Validating to W3C Standards – Validation and SEO
Leesha
1 year ago
Ah, another great article, thanks. I was worried when my website turned up with so many errors and I wondered why the hell it mattered when people could navigate around the site and it was user friendly. At least I don’t have to worry anymore. Thanks!
Brian K. Shoemake
1 year ago
Spoken like a true marketer.
Saying that validation isn’t important to your site is like saying that structural integrity doesn’t matter as long as the shopping mall has lots of foot traffic is making money.
Ridiculous. Validation is only part of the overall quality and success of a website, but you can’t discount the importance of that single step. As we designers work to improve decades of bad habits and browser compatibility, it’s extremely important to get on board with standards as much as possible.
There are still some problems with W3C, but we’ve made huge progress in recent years and your article does nothing to advance that objective.
I admit that not all of my sites validate perfectly for one reason or another, but trying to get as close as possible is important. I think you’re trying to convince yourself that validation is no big deal, but in the long run you’re only fooling yourself.
Thanks for the article. It’s important to keep this dialog going, and everybody’s opinion matters.
Clay (The BDD Dude)
1 year ago
I stand by my thesis. Validation has nothing to do with the success of your site. Zero. Nothing. Go ask Google, Yahoo and every major online player how not validating is hurting their business. It isn’t. It can’t. Validating and working are two different things. A website only needs to work.
The mall analogy doesn’t hold up because a poorly structured building could collapse and actually kill people. A website can’t kill someone, nor will it collapse because of a few validation errors. If it displays perfectly across the major browsers then it’s good to go. A more accurate analogy would be saying that as long as the mall has foot traffic and makes money it doesn’t matter if the paneling it six inches wide or four inches wide or the doors swing outward or inward. Most validation is about as important.
I’m also not trying to convince myself of anything. Most of my sites validate and it means nothing really. That’s not why my clients make money. And making money is all that matters to my clients.
That’s why I said validation is a worthy goal but I certainly wouldn’t get all fussy about some lame errors that really don’t mean anything.
Brian K. Shoemake
1 year ago
I hold the importance of validation much higher than you do because it’s needed if we’re ever going to achieve common standards. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was the day I stopped supporting IE 6, in favor of telling my customers to upgrade to 7/8. Standardization and pressure from W3C standards developers is what finally forced Microsoft to get with the program after 10 years of terrorizing people like me.
I shudder to think that if we developers and designers down play the importance of standardization, or if we fail to promote the importance of a common standard, browser developers will no longer hold it as a top priority. Then who loses? We do. Web designers and web developers will once again be forced to hack our way through evil browsers and applications. We’ve made too much progress to let it slip now.
This war is far from over though. We need to continue putting pressure on companies like Google, Yahoo, and other non-compliant operators just like we did Microsoft.
Using your analogy, standards only matter to the degree that it affects your particular site. However, long-term some of those sites will likely break due to lax validation practices. As browsers and apps are upgraded and improved there’s no way to predict how a non-compliant site will hold up tomorrow, next week, or next millennium.
Clay (The BDD Dude)
1 year ago
Hmmm. I agree. Very good points. I think we’re talking about two different things though. You’re talking about the theories behind validation and how this will play out over an extended period of time in the abstract and in the practical application. I’d say you’re quite right on that. I’m talking about validation as it applies to the effectiveness of any given website and how validation, while a worthy goal, is unrelated to what really matters to a client and to a user. That’s why all the most successful internet companies have websites that don’t validate. Because it doesn’t matter to their immediate profits or the user experience. It’s important that people understand this difference. Otherwise we have lame websites built by clueless designers bragging that they validate as if it has any relationship to quality and people with really great and profitable websites losing sleep because some report told them they had 11 errors and 6 warnings. You can have great websites that also validate, but we shouldn’t confuse the value of each as they serve different masters.
Keshav Arora
11 months ago
Dude, My Website Totally Validates. Check Out My Sticker!
Where is your sticker? The validation of HTML, CSS and RSS is a legal p roof of good coding of your Website. Whether someone or search engine do not consider it, but we should consider it ourselves to have a good, modularized and optimized code. The modularized and optimized code runs faster than others and anyone can upgrade it easily in future.
Clay (The BDD Dude)
11 months ago
I think you missed the true meaning of my headline. It is sarcasm. I’m making fun of people who mistakenly think that a website that validates is de facto a good website. I don’t give a hoot about some validation sticker. It means nothing to my clients or myself. They are also ugly, which further drives my point about focusing on standards at the cost of usability, branding and beauty. And to correct your statement, it is not “legal” proof. Web standards are not laws. They are a set of standards made up by a small group of self anointed gatekeepers. Now granted, the group is headed by Tim Berners-Lees, the guy who invented HTML, the first browser, and coined the term World Wide Web, so this is a very serious and knowledgeable group. But as I’ve said before, you shouldn’t confuse validation, a worthy goal, with everything else that really matters to the user and your success.