Pros & cons of using HTML Tags

[Mary-Ellen Mort]

I have seen allusions to this in other discussions but would like to 
start a thread to tackle the topic head on:

Some website designers--in order to control the "look & feel" of their
pages--use font sizes and other formatting instead of the standard HTML 
heading tags (H1-H6)

But many of the "cool" sites--like c|net--use non-standard tags to control 
white space and to give their site a "different" look.

Few libraries do this (am I wrong?)

My understanding is that using the standard tags aids the search engines 
in indexing the site. Is this true?  If true, is the impact--of not being 
properly indexed--so substantial that one would give up the "cool" look?

Also that using the standard tags will assure cross platform display in a 
variety of browsers.

Do users prefer the "innovative" looking sites or the "standard" sites?
Does anyone have surveys or experiences on this topic?

Mary-Ellen Mort
memort at netcom.com