[imps] Validator.nu HTTP header validation

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:14 PM, PageRank-SEO <contact at pagerank-seo.com> wrote:
> I've also posted this on bugzilla.validator.nu. It's bug #839.
>
> The current HTTP header validation on Validator.nu seems too strict. While I
> realize there are a vast array of meta name="" headers, there are a few I'd
> like to see permitted.

This is not an issue with validator.nu, it's an issue with the HTML5
specification.  HTML5 only allows <meta name> to have either one of
the few values the specification itself gives (application-name,
author, description, generator, keywords), and requires all other
extensions to be registered on the WHATWG wiki:

"""
Conformance checkers must use the information given on the WHATWG Wiki
MetaExtensions page to establish if a value is allowed or not: values
defined in this specification or marked as "proposed" or "ratified"
must be accepted, whereas values marked as "discontinued" or not
listed in either this specification or on the aforementioned page must
be rejected as invalid. Conformance checkers may cache this
information (e.g. for performance reasons or to avoid the use of
unreliable network connectivity).
"""
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/semantics.html#other-metadata-names

For the values to be registered, they need to meet the requirements
that HTML5 sets, including a specification that explains exactly how
they're to be processed.  The meta extensions page is here:

http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions

> These include meta tag verification for the major search engines --
> name="verify-v1" for Google, name="y_key" for Yahoo, name="msvalidate.01"
> for Bing. It is true, of course, that each search engine does provide
> alternative means of verification, but not permitting the most widely used
> means of verification is problematic.

Can't you remove these from the page after you've validated the site?
You don't have to leave them there, right?  If you leave them there
forever, it's probably an authoring error that the validator should
flag.

> This is also true for all pages that
> use name="robots", name="googlebot", name="msnbot", name="slurp", etc meta
> tags rather than an external robots.txt file.

"robots", "googlebot", and "slurp" are currently registered as
proposals.  You could add "msnbot".

> Registering geo meta tags is of assistance with mobile and local search.
> These include name="geo.placename", name="geo.position", and
> name="geo.region". This could also be said for the ICBM meta tag.
>
> I'd like to see the name="copyright" meta tag registered.
>
> In addition, I'd suggest some recognition for the SafeSurf Internet Rating
> Standard. Please see http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm for further
> information.

Feel free to add these as proposals to the meta extensions page.