Links / Validation / PR

[surf_boy]

First of all I am not sure this is the correct thread for this topic?

I have just seen an old customer’s website which has now been revamped by someone else.

There is no inbound links and there is only one outbound link going out.

The site has not been validated, Ref: NO DOCTYPE FOUND! FALLING BACK TO HTML 4.01 TRANSITIONAL

There are only 18 words of content on the index page and Google has assigned a PR of 5 for the first page

So how does Google work the PR out if the links are missing and the site is not validated?

[cabowabo]

It will take 1-2 updates until the PageRank information gets updated, so you will be able to gloat them when their PageRank all but disappears. We've been there too - when clients hire someone else. In a few months, they will have wished they had kept you.

Cheers,

CaboWabo

[encyclo]

Google doesn't check for validation of the markup (nor do browsers, for that matter). As long as it's not so bad it can't read the file or has serious parsing errors (missing

</head>

, for example), then validating the file or adding a doctype won't make any difference for Googlebot.

For the end users, that may be a different matter...

[g1smd]

Having duff code might harm your site. Duff code probably can't help you in any way.

Having perfect code cannot harm you, and might even help you a little.

Do the best job you can on your code. Look at this Google search [google.com], these people have code that is harming them. They all have malformed <title> or </title> tags.

[Chad]

I think you are wrong about "no inbound links". PR is entirely about inbound links, even if Google does not display the backlinks. Check AllTheWeb or Yahoo for inbound links.

A page can have PR -- even before it is created -- if the inbound links exist in advance. All on-page details are totally irrelevant to PR.

[cabowabo]

Good post Chad - all "on page factors" do not calculate into the PR equation.