the 200ok weblog

There's an SEO conference coming up shortly which will feature several Google employees. Russ is calling for your input on questions you'd like asked; and Scott has further thoughts:

• Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Our chance to ask Google
• Signals of Quality | Standardzilla

I've already commented fairly heavily at both sites, so I guess this is a meta post :) For reference, my questions (in no particular order):

• Since 301 redirections get you bombed (and longevity is a big factor in pagerank, so new URLs are effectively bombed), is there a way to move a site without losing your pagerank?
• Will Google ever produce valid pages for their own sites? Many standardistas have produced proof of concept versions of Google search for example - standards compliant AND lightweight. Why not use them?
• Do they think Flash will ever be seriously searchable, in a useful manner? Do they think it will be possible? Would they rank Flash content higher or lower than text content?
• Does Google give equal weight to ABBR contents versus spelled-out terms?
• Does Google give additional weight to tags/tagged pages? (...which leads to the next point...)
• Will Google be indexing/weighting microformatted content? What is Google’s view of microformats and their potential benefits to search? If they did support microformats would that also suggest they’d need to pay more attention to semantics?
• I’d also question their views on whether validation is a "signal of quality". In short, if a page validates surely that is an indication that the author/developer has paid close attention to the construction of the site… which would be a signal of quality in my book!

Then from my comments on Standardzilla:

Google: so few websites validate that it isn’t a signal of quality

...incredibly bad logic there. If a site validates at this point in time, it indicates that someone has paid serious attention to the quality of the page. Surely a signal of quality! Maybe they don’t want to open that door since they’d then be admitting that their own pages suck.

Their interest in accessibility is minimal at best. Accessible search is treated as a bit of a curiosity, as far as I can tell. A neat toy produced by someone’s 20%, but that’s about it.

The thing I’ve come to realise about Google is that they do not consider inaction be "doing evil". Despite the tremendous influence they have, they don’t use it to "do good". Personally I think their inaction is a form of doing evil, but that’s just me.

Do you have questions of your own? Head over to Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Our chance to ask Google and make yourself heard!

Labels: don't be evil, google, seo

The latest product of Google labs shows Google managing to do the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time: Google Accessible Search. It's kind of spectacular that Google can produce a search specifically for accessible resources and still not make a best-practice search form or results page.

It's a pity to see Google miss such a great opportunity to prove they understand accessibility. The pages are a mass of tables and font tags just like any other Google product (ok, so the FAQ does at least use semantic tags, even if it skips the DOCTYPE). Then to cap it off, they promote "accessibility" but only talk about vision impairment. A trap for young players, perhaps; but Google is not a young player.

The service does at least show that it is possible to rank accessible sites higher than tag soup; perhaps we should by lobbying Google to add this to their general search. Creating a separate search reinforces the perception that disabled users should be segregated; or that accessibility is somehow incompatible with "normal" sites.

doesn't it work anyway?

Now, I know that Google's search page is so simple that effectively it's probably "accessible enough". Similarly, the results pages are probably usable despite being sloppy markup. The problem is that it's only by accident that these pages are still accessible. If you're doing something wrong, getting away with it doesn't turn it into doing something right.

To really compound the problem, people use Google's non-compliance as "evidence" that accessibility doesn't matter. They say If Google doesn't do it, why should I bother? That's about the time when accessibility advocates think briefly of belting them one, then instead smile and do their best to explain their point of view ;)

do no evil

I have no doubt that individuals at Google understand accessibility and web standards. However Google the corporation can only be judged by its actions.

Google's refusal to use web standards or meet accessibility guidelines helps perpetuate bad practice across the web. Regardless of cute slogans that may have been scribbled on a whiteboard at Google once... through inaction on standards and accessibility, Google does a little evil every day.

Labels: accessibility, don't be evil, google