Wc3 validation is it still that important

[onlinemediadirect]

When looking to improve a sites ranking . I am working on a site that has script errors and needs fixing have you had any experience ?

[RogersSEO]

are html errors more critical than css?  for me css are more common

[JaspalX]

There was a 'ask Matt'  google webmaster video on YouTube not too long ago where he talked about errors in markup - if I remember right he said it wasn't too important - but of course Ryan's comment is sound - so long as the errors don't break the site for users/crawlers.

[RyanPurkey]

They weren't critical as the page was able to load when scripting was turned completely off, but in the WC3 validator there were only a dozen errors so it shouldn't be too hard to fix them.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Ryan's on track.

Picture it this way - sure, millions of sites fail validation and yet still show up in search results.  Except if there are enough errors, it could either prevent searchbots from successfully discovering all your content, or alternately, prevent search algorithms from properly evaluating content and topical relationships.

A newer concern is if there are too many errors that cause bots to slow down their crawl capacity, that will definitely impact a site's rankings if competitor sites have no such slowdowns.

[onlinemediadirect]

what about the script errors here - http://www.radiatorcentre.com

anything to worry about.

[RyanPurkey]

If the scripting errors cause crawler and indexation problems, than they're problematic, but script errors like a lot of things have shades of gray.  Some are really bad, some not as bad, and some benign.

WC3 validation is nice though as it's helping to insure the quality of the network in general.

[EGOL]

is it still that important

I don't think it was ever important.  Lots of sites still fail to validate and perform well on the web.  Lots of pages on search engine sites don't validate.