Google cares about the end user experience more and more these days, but a < div > tag is a piece of HTML that really has no ill effect on the end user experience, simply the structure and separation of the page. It might be possible that maybe Google is counting < div > tags - it could be that a page that has more < div > tags has more content.
The other thing if you are using < div > tags, you are doing a better job putting the page together so if you have a lot of < div > tags, you have taken the time to make this sections and containers and this is a better page. If we can just throw up a bunch of different < div > tags, is that going to make a difference?
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A div tag is just a container. Generally speaking, for most webpages, it makes a section, it makes something that you could put stuff into. But by and large, there doesn’t seem to be any value to it or there is no express SEO value but hey, that is why we are here.
It looks like, when you look at factors that correlate to rank, sentences correlate to rank and the number of sentences on the page, the number of words on a page, those things need to be organized.
They might be organized by p tags, so you got your paragraphs, they might be ordered according to punctuation, and maybe Google is counting those things, or it might be possible that maybe Google is counting div tags, it is counting different sections on the page to see, in the sense, how much is on this page. So it could be a page that has more div tags has more content.
So, maybe Google is not counting words but they are counting div tags as one possibility. Or the other thing if you are using div tags, you are doing a better job putting the page together so if you have a lot of div tags, you have taken the time to make this sections and containers and this is a better page. That is what we are looking at. If we can just throw up a bunch of different divs, is that going to make a difference?
The <div> tags dropped one stop. They are a negative factor? Actually, they are not. I ran this test five times and it comes out random every time. This is another example of having MRV – my random variance – and I think that is what we are seeing in these kinds of results where we’ve got something that isn’t just a factor, the rankings will get forced and they will move.
This is one of the examples where it dropped and we have another example where it went up, another where it stayed there. It is completely random things going on and that is why these tests are ran multiple times, when we have that data, that is what we talk about, we have more confidence when we run things multiple times, also running things in the inverse, running them the other way is also a big trust factor for us that what we are seeing is legitimate.
Unfortunately, the div tags seem to be not a factor at all. I liked the idea of it, it makes a lot of sense, but there are a lot of things in Google that makes a lot of sense but just don’t work and this is one of them.