The short answer is “No.” While we advocate W3C validation as a general web development best practice, we are not aware of any direct connection between validation and search engine rankings….
The secondary results you’re describing started showing up in Google’s search results sometime around the Summer of 2005 when they were doing a bunch of experiments with their search results…
There you are, minding your business, tending your website and monitoring your site rankings on the search engines, when you see something, er, not quite right in the results pages…
One of the most common questions we get is from people who think their website has disappeared from Google. If you’re in a similar situation, we have some ideas for you in this article.
Gravity is founded on the expertise of its two partners, authors of the acclaimed SEO book "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour A Day" (Wiley, 2006, 2008, 3rd edition upcoming in 2011).
After starting out in industrial and corporate video production, Jennifer Grappone became a web project manager before working exclusively in SEO starting in 2000. Jennifer advocates a holistic approach to SEO, one that combines elements of good writing, usability, search-friendly site design, and link building.
The Left Brain
Gradiva Couzin has been working in SEO since its early days in 1998. With a history as a civil engineer and experience in website and database development, Gradiva excels at the technical side of SEO, and enjoys facilitating communications between techie- and non-techie folks.