Does validating your code improve your ranking? The short answer is no. In fact, Google’s website doesn’t even validate.

They don’t care, and in general, it won’t affect rankings, though this depends on the type of error we are talking about. Google’s website (at the time of writing), has 65 Errors & 8 warnings.

There used [...]

It was recently brought to my attention that there is a trend among some people in the WDI (Web Design Industry) to claim an inflated personal affiliation with Google. It seems, that in an attempt to impress potential (and existing) clients they are making certain remarkable statements (via insinuation), with regard to their relationship to [...]