Does the search engine equate the span to h1?
Of course does not equate .
Each web page is an HTML document. Any document has only one topic - the subject of the document, which briefly informs about the main content of this document. For a webpage, this subject / subject of the document is the content of the H1 element.
If you, as a developer, want to create a meaningful document structure, use the h1 - h6 elements to express the structure of an HTML document. Check out the W3 Heading documentation . The HTML Heading W3schools documentation states:
Headings are important
Search engines use headings to index the structure and content of your web pages.
Practically the same thing recommends Google in its Search Engine Optimization Guide for beginners :
To highlight important text, use header tags.
Recommendations
Imagine that you are writing a review. As with writing a large text review, state the main points and sub-paragraphs of the document and consider where to use heading tags.
The H1 element helps Google better understand what your content is, so that it can properly classify it for relevant search queries.
The span element is an inline element that does not represent anything. The content of the span element will be scanned by the machines as plain text.
Thus, by using the span element instead of the H1 element, you can create an incomprehensible web document structure that can be misleading for search engines and browsers.
Create an experiment: create two web documents — one with a span element and the other with an H1 element — and check the structure of these documents on the HTML5 Outliner tool . Approximately also it is read by machines of search engines and browsers.
In practice, Google probably uses the structure of a web document created with the use of H elements to issue Blocks with answers in Google Search in search of selected fragments.
<span class="h1">, how to make.h1andh1same size, I think, you know - Total Pusher.h1andh1. Then look what is higher in the issue. I will soon put this kind of experience, but not with tags, but with page generation speeds. - Total Pusher