Does PRE lower SERPS?

[gershon]

If a page makes extensive use of PRE tags for formatting, will that lower its ranks in SE results?

Do they see it as not being natural text, and consequently lower it?

[The Contractor]

I have used <pre></pre> tags to no ill effects on some sites. You are formatting pre in CSS aren't you? Seems every browser except Safari will handle the pre tag accordingly with the right workaround. If you format it with CSS, your CSS will not validate because the PRE element, but that's a small price to pay.

Be careful though with Safari though because it will stretch everything to one long line...

[gershon]

Contractor - why can't you use CSS on PRE? I'm not sure I follow.

Also, are you saying that Safari ignores new lines in PRE? That's bizarre!

[The Contractor]

You can/should use CSS for pre tag as all browsers (Mozilla based, Opera, IE) have quirks to work around. Safari does not support the pre tag. It is a known bug, do a search for it as it's even on their developer forums as a bug.

I use something like the following for CSS which handles all the quirks of all browsers except Safari:
pre { color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11.5px; line-height: 15px; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; white-space: -pre-wrap; white-space: -o-pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word }