Google, save us!
It’s time for Google to step up to the plate and rescue the web, for the benefit of us all.
For many years, the responsible sector of the web community has known that standards, validity, and accessibility are all vital for the health of the web and its future growth. We’ve honed our alt attributes, learnt our doctypes, and migrated all our layout tables to well structured HTML + CSS. But that still leaves a large number of practitioners who have failed to do so.
Google is, in many ways, impartial. Generally, search results are weighted according to a ‘link meritocracy’: the best content is linked to more, and the democracy of the web reigns supreme. At least, in terms of content, this approach has broadly succeeded. Fair enough: content is king.
But what if technical merit counted for something, too?
I think it’s time Google did some real good.
Here’s the plan, Google:
- Start indexing data about how well a site validates, how accessible it is, what markup language (and version) it uses, and any requirements (javascript, flash, etc.) it may have. I’m sure you already do some, if not all, of this.
- Make that information available
- Start using it
By ‘start using it”, of course, I mean take it into account when ordering search results. Or, at least, give me the option to do so.
Us web designers/developers have been shouting about poorly-designed sites for years now. IE6 still plagues us, as do popup windows and non-scaling text. But no-one listens, apart from ourselves. Businesses, on the other hand, listen to users, and users ‘listen’ to Google. As soon as ‘naughty business X’ starts seeing their PageRank™ dropping, they’ll start paying attention.
This would be a brave move and would no doubt have its detractors but, with just a little bit of effort, think how far Google could advance web design as we know it.
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Fri 23 Jan 2009 18:11
PixelNate said:
That is best idea I have heard all day. I am sick and tired of clients telling me that people are having trouble viewing their sites only to find out that those "people" are still using IE 6. This must stop. We must, as a group, start refusing to code for IE 6.
Thanks for this post.