Google Says It Uses Valid HTML and CSS In Its Quality Score

Found an interesting thread on Google Webmaster blog that states that Google now use code validation as part of its quality score.

This is pretty massive as for years now I’ve been saying that yes, valid HTML is best practice but that no, it doesn’t really matter to Google.

Of course, like me many SEO’s have until this point added validation errors into our on-site SEO analysis however with the advent of HTML5 and other techniques that can result in as yet, non standard practices (i’m thinking wrapping block level elements in a link).

So in short, get out your W3C validators and start hassling your clients web development team! They’re going to love you for this!