Alternate Validators to the W3C

'Consultants' tell me i have Critical errors...

[kolin]

we've applied to a few web agencies for help with our search engine marketing as that is my weak area. Now a few of them have come back and said that there are 30 critical errors on the homepage and several warnings. that will all affect our google listing. which to be fair is none existant at the moment (despite ranking highly in msn, and now getting higher in yahoo)

i'd like to know if there is any software (other than w3c) that will let me find these so-called 'critical' errors, as i'm very skeptical about them.

Thanks to all who reply

<edit reason: post moved from another location>

[edited by: tedster at 9:07 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2006]

[suzie250]

You don't say if these are "coding errors".

Have you run your pages through the w3 validators? It does a pretty good job of catching errors. If you use the Extended Interface, it will tell you exactly what line the errors are on.

Perhaps the critical errors that the consultants are talking about are titles, keyword count ect.

To answer your exact question, I personally am not aware of other software to check for errors.

[tedster]

If you do a search for "html validator" you will find a number, but they almost all (all?) use the W3C code. There's no reason not to -- it's good and the W3C does set the standard.

I normally use the internal validator in Homesite, which I really like because of all the cusomization it offers. I'm pretty sure that other html editors also come with validators on board. Still, when creating a new template, I will always check the first couple of pages I generate at the W3C. It's so easy from Opera -- just browse to the page you want to check and press Alt+Ctrl+V.

[Leosghost]

from the wording they use ..sounds like they are using firefox with "tidy" installed and just right clicking your pages then letting "tidy" analyse them ..

you could do this yourself ..

go to Moz ..search the extras for tidy ..install ..

set your shingle out as a compliancy consultant ..

( you already know the competitions rates :-)

[rocknbil]

It's also possible the errors they refer to have nothing to do with code errors but are errors in semantics and SEO. Heavily tabled layout, nested tables, graphic-based content, links or content in Javascript, things that won't kick coding errors but are still problems.