Site Mark-up is Abnormally Small

[EGOL]

"Site Mark-up is Abnormally Small"

Nice work.  In the opinion of many people, this is a good thing.  I want my mark-up to be small too.

[Brighton-Soundsystem]

Cheers. As you know it is quite hard work to get a good site with small mark-up. With all the fuss Google makes with Pagespeed it seem contradictory that this is a spam flag.

[Linda-Vassily]

That is the only spam flag I get as well. The explanation is that: "Non-spam sites tend to invest in rich user experiences with CSS, Javascript and extensive mark-up. Accordingly, a large ratio of text to mark-up is a spam signal." I am not too worried about it--a fast site makes for a very good user experience, I think.

[MichaelBird]

Hey William,

This is Michael from the Moz Help Team and I'm happy to help out here! Our tool does not offer an actual ratio result so I couldn't tell you exact numbers here. Essentially we take the HTML and "clean it up" by removing certain markup like comments and white space, etc. Then we do the same for the text on the page and from there our tool trigger's a flag to indicate that the ratio is a factor but not to reveal the exact ratio.

For more information on the spam score tool, check out the most recent Whiteboard Friday in which Rand speaks to "Understanding and Applying Moz's Spam Score Metric".

I hope this helps!

[dcmike]

Damned if you don't - damned if you do - what a nutty game! This is a total surprise. I have been building websites since 1994 and I continued building lean code when bandwidth went up. I don't use CMS - all hand coded asp or, less frequently, PHP. My newer sites are all in the 90's in page speed.

Now I am penalized for this? Shouldn't that message say "Congratulations, Site Mark-up is** Exceptionally **Small"?

[glennmather]

I'm just confused!!!

Most advice appears to say get your text to code ratio over 25%, but then one of the Moz spam factors is you have too much text - they can't both be right!!!!

HELP!!!!!!!

Glenn

[dcmike]

Sometimes you just have to trust your gut! Why would Google create the enormously nit picking Page Speed Tool - then penalize you for following their dictates? I draw a line at certain reasonable levels - and still rank in the top percentiles. If I were new to the game I would be torn between thinking I needed to cut more code for Google - or fatten up to pass Moz's spam-ometer!

The bandwidth load on Google has grown to sublime proportions - it is in their best interest that we pare down the code - to counteract the monumental glut of user generated fluff.

http://search-engine-upgrade.com/google-data-center.htm

Moz tools have made me look like a guru to my client base - BUT - since I know I am not a spammer, I will choose to ignore this spam score and follow what Google clearly encourages.

[dcmike]

PS - to all those wondering what the amount of stars under a poster's picture means......the more stars they have = the less paid work they have & more free time they have to hang out and yak!!

Ergo - the less stars you have, the busier you are!! Right, Michael ,-]

[SeenDigital.co.uk]

Sorry but how does this response help? You've just explained how the tool works which we already kinda know. I want to know how to resolve the issue or if it can be ignored.

[dcmike]

This code ratio metric is merely one of many issues to trigger a spam "conviction". It would seem logical that if you write junk-free code and raise few to no other flags, it should be ignored.

Surely if lean code alone were a violation - there would be no Google page speed tool!

[SeenDigital.co.uk]

Thanks Michael,

My gut would agree. It should be looked at in context and thanks for confirming that for me.

Doesn't help when clients look at the tool though.