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The Web browser maker’s Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA) crawled more than 3.5 million URLs, but discovered that a mere 145,000 - 4.13% - had code which passed W3C’s test for compliance with industry standards for writing HTML.

“This is a very worrying figure, which shows that there is a lot of web standards education still to be done,” Opera said in a summary of its findings.

But the number of sites claiming valid code, is very much higher. Of those displaying a W3C validation icon, only 50% actually validated.

“There are likely many reasons for this disparity, but it is obvious that such badges are not effective at representing the current validation state of a page,” Opera says.

MAMA also looked at website meta tags, where

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the information was available, to see which software was used to create web pages. Apple’s iWeb proved to be the most standards compliant, with 81.9% of sites passing the W3C test. No other web authoring app managed more than than Adobe Dreamweaver’s 3.4%. Microsoft’s FrontPage and Word - yes, people really do use Word to create websites - fared worse with just 0.6% of sites validating. Softpress Freeway was not tested and doesn’t make the list, though generating valid code is one of its key selling points.

“The text and web page editors that identified themselves via the META element simply embarrassed themselves compared to the general population's validation pass rate … except for a lone shining beacon. Apple's iWeb editor definitively won the day in this category - an astounding result,” Opera says

Web standards, if properly applied, help to make sites easier to use and maintain, ensure cross-platform compatibility and improve access to people with disabilities. But Opera accepts that achieving universal compliance is unlikely.

“Will we ever get everyone validating?,” the report asks. “That is a bit much to hope for. HTML’s genesis as a simple language that anyone and everyone could learn means that there will inevitably always be those that don’t know all (or most) of the rules.”

On the brighter side, the situation has improved on previous surveys: at the end of 2001 the figure was just 0.71% rising to 2.58% in June 2006.