Do Bold and Italic Fonts Affect SEO Rankings?

[c4yrslf12]

At the risk of sounding like I've been in this industry for two weeks... (please put the pitchfork down...)

Does anyone have any evidence of bold/italic fonts having any impact on organic search rankings in this year? Obviously used in conjunction with keywords, not just styling for kicks and giggles.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I don't have any evidence for two reason:

1) It'd take a very isolated test to do on a factor that...
2) doesn't seem to have much impact.

I mean, if you were battling someone at 99.2% optimized, and that's when you tossed in the bold or italics, you might bump to 99.3% and beat them. But at the end of the day that was a 0.1% change, and not generally worth messing with. I feel like it's a better way of screwing yourself into over-optimization if not done classily than it is helpful. Much like meta-keywords these days.