HTML Compression

[chicagosem]

Has enyone ever used html compression software and noticed a rise or drop in rankings?

I am considering using it on some of my heavier hit pages to reduce file size but I am not sure what effect it will have, especially if I use it inconsistantly on my site (on 5-10 strategic pages out of 900 or so.)

Thanks in advance :D

[PhilC]

HTML compression? Never heard of it. If you mean gzip, it won't affect anything, because the engines unzip it.

[mick g]

I have used HTML Shrinker, a desktop program and it's possible to reduce pages by up to 70% in file size in a matter of seconds, its hard to say if you would get any benefit on ranking but its certainly worth using on any large pages like a site map to get it closer or under 100k in size

[chicagosem]

I was thinking of compresing it not so much to obtain an seo advantage but for our dialup friends -- just want to be careful that Google in particular won't ding us for it as from a coding perspective it is bad practice as it eliminates all unneccesary white space and will be used inconsistantly throughout the site.

[mick g]

it will not make any difference to search engine spiders having the code all on one line without the white space, the difficulty comes when you want to edit the page, if you use a program like dreamweaver then its not a problem