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Re: Does text <Pre></Pre> rank poorly?

  • Subject: Re: Does text <Pre></Pre> rank poorly?
  • From: John Bokma <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: 19 Feb 2006 18:35:14 GMT
  • Newsgroups: alt.internet.search-engines
  • Organization: Castle Amber - software development
  • References: <43f60fe3$0$2466$edfadb0f@dread14.news.tele.dk> <Xns976D7D988A5A8castleamber@130.133.1.4> <1RoJf.47082$T35.762760@news20.bellglobal.com> <dt8iuq$1rt2$1@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk>
  • User-agent: Xnews/2005.10.18
  • Xref: news.mcc.ac.uk alt.internet.search-engines:77590
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> __/ [canadafred] on Friday 17 February 2006 18:45 \__
> 
>> 
>> "John Bokma" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:Xns976D7D988A5A8castleamber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> "dk_sz" <dk_sz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have some pages generated from text files
>>>> that have <pre></pre> tags around them.
>>>>
>>>> However, it seems to me they never come
>>>> up in anything but extremely specific search.
>>>>
>>>> Sooo... I am wondering... Do you think that this
>>>> can be because <pre> tags almost count negative...?
>>>>
>>>> Just wondering if anyone experienced the same.
>>>
>>> Can't think of any reason why that should be the case (i.e. pre
>>> counting less compared to p)
>>>
>>> I do get quite some hits on perl code specific things and yet the
>>> perl code is in a pre (and code).
> 
> 
> That might change some day in the near future:

You mean, it might get better.

> http://www.krugle.com/
> 
> Source code is being indexed differently (as language with syntax), so
> it might be searched separately, with the exclusion of normal text.

Well, lets see how long it will exists. Already people are complaining 
about GPL, LGPL, BSD license, etc. etc.

> I have literally thousands of pages where actual text is <pre>'d
> almost entirely. Such pages get fairly good traffic from search
> engines, but nothing on par with pages that bear higher ranks and have
> content in <p>'s. 
> 
>> I'm also discovering more and more <pre>, <li> and even "untagged"
>> <body> content being considered as valid content by the major search
>> engines, but it wasn't long ago when this content was considered
>> unacceptable. 
> 
> I think I can see the motive for that. It helps exclude some less
> relevant content.

Why is something in a li not relevant, moreover, I would say it's more 
relevant.

And pre less relevant, based on what? It's a piece of cake to mark up 
<p> with whitespace handling the same as pre. So if someone can prove 
Google does this, it can be circumvented in a few seconds.

(For some time I have been wondering if PRE is pure visual, and hence 
shouldn't be in a strict HTML spec, or not).

>> I am experimenting with this theory again at this time. I accept that
>> part of staying up-to-date in SEO requires that I shed some past
>> standards and learn to adapt to the new.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing the outcome. One multi-file search and
> replace could makes a noticeable difference...

Me too, and the fix is a piece of cake :-)

-- 
John                Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

Perl RSS Builder:    http://johnbokma.com/perl/rss-web-feed-builder.html

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