OK, I wanted to straighten this validation + best search rankings thing out

[jag5311]

I really want to straighten this out. I have heard both side from all my research. There are alot of people knowledgable in the areas of XHTML and css and alot of people knowledgable in the areas of Search engine optimization.

Does valid XHTML really help search engine rankings? Do browsers really care whether its running into a <font> tag or width, or whatever?

I just feel like I am being bounced back and forth in this area and wouldn't mind some "professional" comments on this matter.

Thanks
Bryan

[vgarcia]

Explained

[jag5311]

gracias

[pissant]

xhtml can help search engines in as much as the ratio of markup to content is greatly improved...
There is also unconfirmed rumours that some search engines also use html headers and p tags to categorise content

[mattjb]

FWIW, I've seen the real-world difference. When we switched from a regular HTML 1.0 Transitional based CMS to one that supports XHTML for www.3dgpu.com, which averages 1.5 million hits a month, and started using CSS to handle the style of the site, our Google ranking went up. Not to mention our Alexa ranking went up, and visitors were more liable to surf around on the site longer because it loaded significantly faster, and worked on the majority of the browsers out there (before it didn't work right in Firebird or Opera). I can say with full confidence that it does help, a lot.