Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and HTML 5 According to Google

Although HTML 5 is all the rage, and most web browsers support its features, the verdict is still out as to how HTML 5 will impact your site’s search engine optimization (SEO). Google’s JohnMu talked about the subject in a recent Google Webmaster Help thread.

According to the discussion, Google will not currently give any special consideration to your HTML 5-equipped website. JohnMu seemed to almost brush away the question, stating that if you are using HTML 5 for SEO results, you may want to reconsider your statedgy.

The way he stated it, the Google bots are already used to seeing markup that they aren’t able to interpret, so if some of your code is not usable by the bots, no worries. “Our general strategy is to wait to see how content is marked up on the web in practice and to adapt to that. If we find that more and more content uses HTML5 markup, that this markup can give us additional information, and that it doesn’t cause problems if webmasters incorrectly use it (which is always a problem in the beginning), then over time we’ll attempt to work that into our algorithms. With that in mind, I definitely wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your implementing parts of your site with HTML5, but I also wouldn’t expect to see special treatment of your content due to the HTML5 markup at the moment.”