: Do tabs, spaces, and line-breaks in HTML markup affect search engine optimization? I am looking for information regarding tabs, spaces, and line-breaks in HTML/XHTML markup and whether it affects

@Berryessa370

One thing to bear in mind is that even though these won't affect SEO they might affect CTR, e.g. if you have a <br > within an <h1> or <h2> and Google decides to take this as your page title instead of the one you provide, Google users will only see the text before the <br > in the SERPS page title.

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@Moriarity557

Tabs, Line Breaks, and Spaces, are for readability. It will not affect any SE.

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@Bryan171

White space isn't a problem for search spiders, they just ignore it. Use a sensible amount to make your code easy to maintain, but don't go overboard. If you're using tonnes of it, it'll increase the file size, but really, it won't make a big difference.
buildmysiteforfree.com/seo-tip-27-is-excessive-whitespace-in-the-html-source-bad/

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@Sent6035632

According to this SEO blog entry, which is transcribing what the head of Google's webspam team Matt Cutts says in the Video, no.


We really don’t care that much. We’re pretty good that anytime we see white space, we’ll separate stuff and we can ignore white space. It really doesn’t cause us a lot of harm either way.
The only thing to really pay attention to is where I have seen some really sneaky people who will try to do hidden text or whatever and they’ll start off their HTML with like 60 new lines. So whenever you view source code you’re like, “Man, it’s blank, there is no source. Whoa dude you just blew my mind.” And anybody who is savvy is like, “or I can use the scroll bar and see what’s down here.”


It wouldn't make any sense, either.

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