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RE: "Maximize the ratio of content to markup" What's the unde

• From: "Meadows, Philip" <Phil.Meadows@s...>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 12:05:47 -0000

A problem that I can see with the second <Author> segment is that it
would be difficult to add extra information at a later date, such as
address, contact details etc.

Phil Meadows


-----Original Message-----
From: Costello, Roger L. [mailto:costello@m...] 
Sent: 05 March 2008 12:02
To: xml-dev@l...
Subject:  "Maximize the ratio of content to markup" What's the
underlying principle?

Hi Folks,

Yesterday I read this:

"Search engines look for semantic markup with a high ratio of content
to code." [Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter]

For example, this is not good design:

<div>
    <div id="Main">
        <p>Hello World</p>
    </div>
</div>

The outer div is providing no benefit.  It can be more simply expressed
as:

<div id="Main">
    <p>Hello World</p>
</div>

The later version provides a higher ratio of content to code (tags).
And from the quote above, search engines rank higher documents with a
higher ratio of content to code.

What is the underlying principle?  Why do search engines prefer
documents with a higher ratio of content to markup?

Can the principle be applied to XML data design?

For example,

This is not good design:

<Author>
    <Name>Paul McCartney</Name>
</Author>

The Name element is providing no benefit.  It can be more simply
expressed as:

<Author>Paul McCartney</Author>

The later version provides a higher ratio of content to code (tags).

What do you think?  Is there a principle of data design being
illustrated here?  Can you articulate the principle?

/Roger

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• References:
  • "Maximize the ratio of content to markup" What's the underlying principle?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>