Will Google punish me for not using <ul><li>?

Question

Expanding on https://css-tricks.com/navigation-in-lists-to-be-or-not-to-be/ -- I'm quite against using lists to clutter ones markup, unless we're talking actual typographical (bulleted, numbered) lists.

Will this, however, affect my ranking?

I've noticed if I do, say:

<nav>
  <a>Lorem</a>
  <a>Ipsum</a>
  <a>Dolor</a>
  <a>Sit</a>
  <a>Amet</a>
</nav>

that my search result will look like:

example.com - My page title
www.example.com/url/to/page - Translate this page
LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet...

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it because I lack a sitemap?

Answer 1

There is no reason to assume that Google Search would punish a page if the page’s navigation is not using ul.

Using ul for navigation is good for various reasons, but the ranking in search engines is most likely not one of them.

That Google Search is showing "LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet" in your result snippet is maybe because you are not using block-level elements (like div or li) for each link (or, if you are actually using a different snippet, maybe because you have not added appropriate whitespace).

Just using a couple of a elements results in, depending on the whitespace in the HTML, either LinkLinkLink or Link Link Link. One of the reasons for using ul is to prevent that (which would also make it easier for people using non-CSS user-agents, like text browsers, to use your page).