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Read it, comment, and share it with your friendsMSN Search is XHTML compliant
MSN Search is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Google is not.
But no! Micro$oft is the enemy!
Okay, let’s step back for a moment. Let’s forego using the dollar sign for a while and consider a few important points.
MSN Search is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Not transitional. Strict. The pages are semantic. The results are a list. Data tables are properly used. No errors on the search page. Only one error on the about page.
This is very successful for a business website. Most business websites that do a standards compliant redesign fail at eliminating errors and making their content semantic. Microsoft may be setting a record. Also, this follows on the heels of Microsoft joining the Web Standards Project and launching a standards compliant website for their new product, Codename Max.
Clearly Microsoft has their offensive going. We all know about the heated battle between Microsoft and Google, and the efforts on both sides to control the search market. The question is, who’s right?
It’s hard to tell. What does matter, though, is whether we can put the pressure on Google to follow suit, and make their site standards compliant. It would really shake up the web, and open up a new world of accessibility for internet users.
So are we willing to send Google the message that Microsoft has done something right? I know that MSN Search has been more successful to date at indexing this website and others on the rdpdesign.com domain, more successful than Google, and that’s important. While Google blog search is a very successful and useful tool, the main Google search has been, well, lacking in the past few months. It may be the relevancy, or the search spam. Or maybe Pagerank isn’t as effective as claimed.
Regardless, making MSN Search standards compliant is definitely not enough to drive web developers to it, but it’s A Good Thing out of a company that has fumbled in the past, and we ought to encourage more of the same.
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2 Comments
Responses to my articleIn the big picture, the overwhelming majority of users will say “huh?”. The bottom line is that google is a better search engine even if their HTML is not as tight. Its not as important to have your HTML coded well, as it is to have your applications coded well. …like say, windows! As soon as M$ starts actually selling secure code for their OS, then they can brag about compliance. Until then, I’d rather them dedicate the talent to keeping nasty bugs and people out of my OS instead of making a search page XHMTL compliant. …but you are right, they deserve credit for doing something right
Is Google search really that much better? I use it all the time but I’ve definitely seen its faults. For one thing, it’s too dependent on pagerank (links). The fact that people can do “Google bombing” to associate a certain phrase with a certain website with just links is a definite flaw in the system. It also seems like many of the first page results on various searches are not quite related, especially when doing searches on more esoteric topics.
Apparently MSN Search has new algorithms… I’m interested in seeing tests to see the effectiveness of the various search engines as of late.
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