Why is Google...

[WakeMeUp]

.. not html validated? I was just wondering this. It'd cost something like 5$ i guess, at least for the homepage.

[anon]

.. not html validated?

Bandwidth. When you're getting thousands of hits every second, every byte counts.

[Barbarossa]

.. not html validated? I was just wondering this. It'd cost something like 5$ i guess, at least for the homepage.

What are you on about?

[anon]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.google.com

[Barbarossa]

OK cool! Cheers for that.

[WakeMeUp]

Oh, that's interesting. Didn't think about that. But then, why do they leave the " in the href all of the <a> tags for example? Would work the same, without having those extra chars.

[anon]

why do they leave the " in the href all of the <a> tags for example? Would work the same, without having those extra chars.

Unless the URL has a non URL-encoded space, in this case only everything before the space is linked to. Compare this:

<a href=http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi man>LINK</a>

With this:

<a href="http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi man">LINK</a>

The percent-encoding for an space is %20. By enclosing them between quotes, they save at least one byte for every URL with an space on it, Of course, two bytes are wasted for every search result that doesn't. I'd check if the search results page automatically chooses between using quote marks or not but I'm happy with Scroogle

[WakeMeUp]

Unless the URL has a non URL-encoded space, in this case only everything before the space is linked to. Compare this:

<a href=http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi man>LINK</a>

With this:

<a href="http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi man">LINK</a>

The percent-encoding for an space is %20. By enclosing them between quotes, they save at least one byte for every URL with an space on it, Of course, two bytes are wasted for every search result that doesn't. I'd check if the search results page automatically chooses between using quote marks or not but I'm happy with Scroogle

No, you don't need that. You can replace the space with the + sign, and it would work the same. And looking at the code they use this method, but still do use the quote sign.

What a mistery.

[anon]

You can replace the space with the + sign, and it would work the same.

I think that's only when you're replacing an space in a query string. This:

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi+man

Would work, but this:

http://golf.sportec.es/reglas/REGLAS+2004-2008+_internet_Regla+20.pdf

Wouldn't. But if you replace the +'s with spaces in the second link, you'll be able to download the PDF.

[WakeMeUp]

I think that's only when you're replacing an space in a query string. This:

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=hi+man

Would work, but this:

http://golf.sportec.es/reglas/REGLAS+2004-2008+_internet_Regla+20.pdf

Wouldn't. But if you replace the +'s with spaces in the second link, you'll be able to download the PDF.

That's right, + it's the separator and stands for the space (no mistery here, any get form will behave this way) in query strings. Those links are the only ones I can think google would use (for example see the images links in the homepage in anniversaries). Beside that, the use of quotation marks seems to be useless for the purpose of just-display-my-content. In fact, as you can see everything is url encoded in a proper way before being displayed.