Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Google Doesn’t Validate

Posted in Google by Elliott Back on May 14th, 2005.

Has anyone ever noticed that Google doesn’t validate, and doesn’t even have a doctype declaration?

Here’s a minimal set of changes to get Google’s homepage up to speed:

Add a doctype, such as XHTML 1.0
Add a terminator / for the meta, br, and img tags
Add type attributes for script and style tags
Quote nonliteral attribute values like #ffffff nearly everwhere
Make javascript events lowercase, so onLoad becomes onload
Replace topmargin attribute with CSS margin style

You can see a validating copy here. Also, compare with the validation of any MSN search page: validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&srch_type=0&q=something

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2005 at 7:58 pm and is tagged with css margin, type attributes, img tags, doctype declaration, javascript events, google, style tags, ffffff, search msn, msn search, search page, terminator, validation, meta, br. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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JWK 3 years ago 1 point
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That doesn't seem like a big deal to me, honestly.

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http://www.trendyblog.com

Elliott Bäck 3 years ago 1 point
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Google, as one of the web's largest companies, should work towards web-standards whenever possible. It's true that the difference between their home page or any of their pages and a valid XHTML page are minor, but it would be a show of good faith if they *did* validate.

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http://elliottback.com

ceejayoz 3 years ago 1 point
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On the other hand, saving a single character or two results in terabytes of saved bandwidth for the amount of traffic they get.

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http://ceejayoz.com/

Elliott Back 3 years ago 1 point
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Yeah, but by the same argument, Google has so many distributed servers that a few hundred terabytes don't really matter to them ;)

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George Bezel 3 years ago 1 point
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Then again, JWK, you are an idiot.

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Eric 3 years ago 1 point
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I've noticed this too. But I also noticed that your version doesn't validate with Tidy:

"line 28 column 209 - Warning: '

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Elliott Back 3 years ago 1 point
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Not sure what you mean, Eric:

Valid RSS?

According the RSS validator, things are OK. I get a warning because of a script tag in one old post.

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Stephen Stagg 3 years ago 1 point
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What is more annoying is that Google ads don't seem to validate meaning that otherwise-clompliant sites come up with hundreds of warnings / errors.

Tidy gives 6 warnings for this page, things like links not having href="" and scripts not specifying content-type.

Interestingly it also gives you 31 warnings for the advert bar included. Seems like google isn't the only offender :)

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http://www.minimology.co.uk

Stephen Stagg 3 years ago 1 point
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p.s. Try clicking the XHTML tag at the bottom of the page :D

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http://www.minimology.co.uk

Whatever 2 years ago 1 point
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Please do not discuss validation until you move to XHTML Strict. I'm tired of hearing whiny designers and posers lambaste other sites for not "validating" when they're using some weak-ass interim markup.

Go strict, or go home.

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Nick 1 year ago 1 point
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Nonsense, it is far more important to be supporting at least *some* documented standard than to support any specific one.

We support standards so as to ensure compatibility with current and future browsers - that's really the only reason - and since XHTML (served as XML) works correctly on fewer browsers than HTML 4.0 does, supporting it at this stage shouldn't really be your number one priority.

Personally I use XHTML served as text. It's not fully compliant with the standard, but it works on most (all?) browsers, and it will be less work to convert it later when IE finally catches up with 2007 (or should that be 1999?)

And yes, it would be nice if Google would take some steps in this direction.

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http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk

Um 2 months ago 1 point
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Who the hell cares if it validates or not. As long as it's functional, lays out right and the client is happy, nobody f***ing cares. This whole validation thing is nothing but an overdrawn inside joke created by anal retentive web developers and the minority of the moaning and groaning blind community.

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Zoe Altenberg 3 days ago 1 point
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They're making billions of dollars!! Can't they afford to have someone validate their stinking code?!?!?

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http://ZoeAltenberg.com

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