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Elf Sternberg
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BS indeed
Date: 2009-06-13 07:42 pm (UTC)Google & friends tend to be pragmatic. At least 99% of the websites out there are written to satisfy the owner's or client's requirements, which generally stipulate that the page layout should be as desired - on all popular web browsers. That's the main reason why "pure" CSS for layout still hasn't really caught on yet: it's enough of a pain (even without considering the cross-browser issues that are still a fact of life today) that it doesn't warrant the extra effort, development time, testing and other ways to bust the budget. Purists frown on the use of tables for layout, but out there in the real world tables are still a much better way to get the job done as per specs, on time, and within the budget, than is CSS.
So layout tables tend to get used simply from a standpoint of practicality. And Google & friends deal with that pragmatically, and as a result the use of tables for layout rarely impacts SEO to a noticable degree. Yes, it can have some effect, but not nearly as bad as not including sensible alt parameters in img tags, proper copy writing (search engines index text, after all) or the misuse of flash for navigation.
The advise not to use layout tables is a bit of a deja-vu for me. There was a time in the mid-1990s when Altavista, Yahoo and Google wouldn't index a site that used frames, so back then frames were a no-no if you wanted your site indexed at all. But that problem just went away. Rather than expect web authors to abandon frames (which did have their use at the time), search engine operators fixed it simply by updating their web crawler algorithms to handle frames. As they have done with HTML code using layout tables long ago.
There are many things one should NOT do with layout tables (especially from a standpoint of accessibility) but even this doesn't mean that layout tables should be abolished - it only means that they should be implemented properly.
// Frank