RE: XHTML as XML

Google does not "love" your site because you are serving it up as XHTML, but because the XHTML format provides for far less script clutter on your site (since you are now using css instead of html markup). This means that the textual content within your pages stands out more.

However, the effect of this seems to have been diminished since the recent "Allegra" update, according to preliminary analysis.

Regards,
David.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-html-request@w3.org [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org]On Behalf
Of Lachlan Hunt
Sent: jueves, 10 de febrero de 2005 13:16
To: Jesper Tverskov
Cc: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: XHTML as XML



Jesper Tverskov wrote:
> 1) First I test if an http accept-header exists. If it does not, as is
> the case of Google, I use XHTML 1.1 and mime-type application/xhtml+xml
> and I include the xml declaration at the top of the document.

What evidence do you have that google is receiving the document as 
application/xhtml+xml?

Well, I can tell you for a fact that google is recieving the XHTML 1.0 
variant of your website as text/html.  The source code within the Google 
cache [1] shows an XHTML 1.0 DOCTYPE with no xml declaration, just below 
the junk google inserts at the top of every cached page.

Also, a simple google search for "google support application/xhtml+xml" 
[2] reveals several documents explaining it is not supported.

> It is probably only a matter of time before Google announces or let it
> be known that web pages served as xml get higher ranking. 

Why should google rank pages higher based on the MIME type?  There is no 
semantic difference between a document marked up in plain XHTML 1.0 and 
the same document marked up as HTML 4.01, so there can be no assumption 
of an XHTML document being somehow inherently better than HTML.

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:lEyprWLNgFIJ:www.smackthemouse.com/
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=google+support+application%2Fxhtml%2Bxml

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
http://GetFirefox.com/    Rediscover the Web
http://SpreadFirefox.com/   Igniting the Web

Received on Friday, 11 February 2005 03:31:37 UTC