Index: src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/TikaParser.java
===================================================================
--- src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/TikaParser.java	(revision 1652046)
+++ src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/TikaParser.java	(working copy)
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
 import org.apache.tika.parser.ParseContext;
 import org.apache.tika.parser.Parser;
 import org.apache.tika.parser.html.HtmlMapper;
+import org.apache.tika.sax.XHTMLContentHandler;
 import org.slf4j.Logger;
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
 import org.w3c.dom.DocumentFragment;
@@ -97,6 +98,8 @@
 		DocumentFragment root = doc.createDocumentFragment();
 		DOMBuilder domhandler = new DOMBuilder(doc, root);
 		domhandler.setUpperCaseElementNames(upperCaseElementNames);
+		domhandler.setDefaultNamespaceURI(XHTMLContentHandler.XHTML);
+
 		ParseContext context = new ParseContext();
 		if (HTMLMapper != null)
 			context.set(HtmlMapper.class, HTMLMapper);
Index: src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/DOMBuilder.java
===================================================================
--- src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/DOMBuilder.java	(revision 1652046)
+++ src/plugin/parse-tika/src/java/org/apache/nutch/parse/tika/DOMBuilder.java	(working copy)
@@ -62,6 +62,12 @@
   protected Stack<Element> m_elemStack = new Stack<Element>();
 
   /**
+   * Element recorded with this namespace will be converted to Node without a
+   * namespace
+   */
+  private String defaultNamespaceURI = null;
+  
+  /**
    * DOMBuilder instance constructor... it will add the DOM nodes
    * to the document fragment.
    *
@@ -272,8 +278,8 @@
     
 	// Note that the namespace-aware call must be used to correctly
 	// construct a Level 2 DOM, even for non-namespaced nodes.
-    if ((null == ns) || (ns.length() == 0))
-      elem = m_doc.createElementNS(null,name);
+    if ((null == ns) || (ns.length() == 0) || ns.equals(defaultNamespaceURI))
+      elem = m_doc.createElementNS(null, name);
     else
       elem = m_doc.createElementNS(ns, name);
 
@@ -749,4 +755,12 @@
   public void setUpperCaseElementNames(boolean upperCaseElementNames) {
       this.upperCaseElementNames = upperCaseElementNames;
   }
+  
+  public String getDefaultNamespaceURI() {
+      return defaultNamespaceURI;
+  }
+
+  public void setDefaultNamespaceURI(String defaultNamespaceURI) {
+      this.defaultNamespaceURI = defaultNamespaceURI;
+  }
 }