Does Google favour CSS sites?

Or will I suffer any sort of penalty for converting my site?

[JackR]

After several months of studying the benefits of CSS, I decided to take the plunge and had my site redesigned to W3C (XHTML Strict)/CSS/WAI/Bobby Watchfire (AAA) compliance.

I should stress that the layout and the URLs have not been changed in any way - just the design.

16 pages of code for one page has now been reduced to just 3 pages, etc.

Can anyone who has completely redesigned using CSS please tell me if they encountered any problems with Google - specifically, were your SERPs effected, and if so how?

[idolw]

should be no problems unless you use some ugly trick like hidden text or links.

[simonuk]

Every website I've ever re-designed has increased position when it went css-based.

[travelin cat]

we moved to a content management system in css from static html... nothing but good stuff from the search engines.

In fact ranking and traffic are both much much better....

[WiseWebDude]

CSS is the way to go, not only for search engines, but for page load times as well. Plus it is so much easier when coding, heck...better all the way around!

[JackR]

Thanks for the replies folks.

Can anyone advise me which is the best Content Management System to use with a .CSS site?

At the moment the backbone is a custom-designed .PERL Content Management System. Whilst this is VERY functional, it's out of date and needs replacing.

So, what's the best solution for a modern CMS that works well with a .CSS based site?