Tableless & Search Engine Results

Do tableless designs using CSS achieve better results on search engines? I have heard this both ways and want some input from people here on the forums.

Does a website with primarily tableless design layout with tables (such as to show data) hurt the website because it isnt under industry validation?

What is your opinion on this topic?

I would say that is does, I've always designed with CSS and tables for data so I haven't seen it personally but I have heard it time and time again "that my site improved in the SERPs once I changed to a CSS layout", cant say I've ever heard it the other way around TBH.

Isn't that a contradiction as the use of html tables is for data purposes only so therefore it is up to industry validation. If you are using data outside of a html table you would be breaking industry validation.

I wouldn't worry about it, you are coding the right way by the sounds of it.

Structure,
Seperation of CSS and JS,
Proper use of html mark up for data.

Search engines don't relie on validation try to get most of Google pages to validate to strict?

Just try to cut your code bloat if it then makes sense to place data in html tables just make sure you code them properly with row headers, table footer, table body, table header, caption etc...

Jaz

they say that tableless is much better when creating a site.