Well apparently it doesn't hurt... the basis of the theory relies on the fact that ensuring your site is W3C validated, the spiders can sift through your content a lot better. Check out this article for more details: http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/s...chRankings.html

Faken

I believe it does not. What the bot cares about are the metas, the correlation between the text and the links and so on. W3C validation is good to consider IMO but not from a ranking point of view

I think that it does help... that as well as having a good web site structure (naming files, organizing pages in subdirectories, etc.)...

I think validation helps all around. You know your code is compliant with most if not all browsers, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that you took the time to make it work for everyone and be standards compliant, and you can show that to your visitors, who will in turn see that you care.

I think valid code would be much easier for search bots to read and interpret, making it possibly easier to get listed? I'm sure if you have horrible code that the bot can't read you wouldn't get listed very easily...