I dont know what to use to code a site in the eyes of google. I currently uses tables and i noticed seo-guy uses tables. Is it better to use tables or doesnt it matter in the eyes of google?

Sorry bluesaga,

Although this is definitely a Google related question, I think it has more to do with the programming aspects. It's a great question though, and I really hope we can get some discussion going on it.

SEO Bob

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SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

Hi y'all. This is my first time here. Awesome place! Just wanted to say I hope someone can answer the question posed above, because my site is mostly in div's and I need to know if I should change it to tables too. Thanks!

I remember using a table on another site and it dropped a fair bit ....I just used a cell to include a load of text; I was quite suprised.

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Web Design Newport Cardiff
SEO Wales

We use tables on 90% of our sites instead of divs, and seo guy's results really do speak for themselves.

The only advantage that i can see in using divs instead of tables is that you can place your navigation anywhere you want on the page (left side, top, upside down and backwards) and you can still make your actual content be positioned at the top of the file (which IS a good thing)

One reason that tables are nice is for older browsers. There's still quite a few people out there using old versions of ie 3 - 5, or netscape 4. Older browsers have issues with brand spanking new things like div layers and css repositioning.

Sparko,
I've never heard of anyone LOSING rankings because they used a table or two. I think that there must have been something else that happened at the same time that caused your ranking drop.

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

I've been having issues with my cookies expiring, so i had to post that before I was finished.

Now, if I was creating a brand new domain from scratch, and I had the option of divs or tables, I'd probably use divs. The fact of the matter is that XHTML doesn't like tables, and puts too many limitations on them, imho. Unless I'm working on a domain for an industry where the average is using legacy hardware, I personally feel it's safe to assume that the user is using Windows ME or newer software.

Me shipped with IE 5.5, so there's not going to be too many issues there.
(oh yeah, and all AOL users won't have any problems, as AOL updates their IE version automatically with each new generation.)

Hopefully I haven't gone on too much of a rant, but there's my 2 cents

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

wHAT ARE "dIVS"
?

divs are when you use the <div> tag and are useful when using CSS. The <div> tag defines divisions in a web page and allows you to specify the alignment of the pgae. Div also gives you the option to define the style in a section of code.

The capability of the div tag that we've been talking about is that the div tag gives you the ability to name elements of code, and place them where you want on the page (by using the CSS positioning capability).

One place we should all be using the div tag is in text alignment. The <center> tage was deprecated in the HTML 4 specification, and we're all supposed to be using <div align="center"> (or text-align: center) from now on.

__________________
SEO Tutorial
Bob's quote of the week:
SEO Bob: "world cup of hockey is starting isn't it [, Dilligaf]? Who are you cheering for dilli?"
Dilligaf: "Well... if you promise not to tell my neighbours... "Oh Canada... ""

Google likes DIVS, so I would advice you to build up all your layouts using CSS2 styles instead of Tables.
Using DIVs have also a huge amount of benefits, plain content, less code, portability, accesibility, etc.
Bye.

I've noticed that using divs can have a negative effect on google's display of your website cache. I use divs to position content in my back issues (so i can easily insert adsense ads) and they tend to cover up the cache info that google provides. Not a big deal for most sites since the average user probably never checks the cache, but it kinda degrades the usefullness of the cache since it sometimes makes the page a lot harder to read.

I wonder if theres a way to solve this problem. Could you somehow detect when the site is being displayed through googles cache and reposition your divs?

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Surrealism - HPLC