Sgt_Kickaxe - 5:33 pm on May 3, 2012 (gmt 0)

I'm also concerned about not using closing tags for paragraphs, which as far as I know is still a recommended practice.

Google doesn't trust webmasters and never wants to take what we add to a site as something they rely on so it makes sense that if they see an opening paragraph tag, and later another opening tag, that what was in between was a paragraph. Afterall, webmasters might be stupid and forget to close a tag right? Does this mean ALL closing tags are ignored by Google? Probably.

Does that mean you should omit them? Absolutely not. Proper formatting and completeness isn't optional. Can you imagine if we all wrote in a way Google understands (since they know what were going to write before we write it)? it would look something like this...

<p>This paragraph was written for Google to show what Google sees.</p>

Would become: <p>Thi parag wa writ fo Goo to sh wha Goo see

...and I think enough youngsters try to write like that already but that doesn't mean it's right. Don't encourage it.