Some information about Google (and sometimes Bing) that has been gathered here and there lately, along with answers to some questions this week: Does Google manage Markdown pages as well as HTML pages?

Goossip #1

Markdown Should Not Replace HTML

Someone on LinkedIn asked John Mueller whether Google processes .md (i.e., Markdown) pages differently than standard HTML pages, and especially if they are rendered well by Googlebot.

The relevant person's response: « These are text files. They look like text files to users in the browser. If you want to create web pages, then make web pages, not text files. »

Trust Level: ⭐⭐⭐ We agree!

From an SEO perspective, generating clean, accessible, and well-marked HTML is better than relying on a raw text file. The risk of using “Markdown for bots” is presenting a weakened version of the page and making the discovery of content more difficult. Markdown is a good option as an internal working format. There is no problem as long as the end user receives a complete and consistent HTML page.