Forum Moderators: open
ie, <!-- This site contains information about: new cars cars trucks SUVS //-->
?
Spam. If I found a competitor's site full of that, I'd report it.
<!-- Code added 12/30/02 -->
or
<!-- Input form used by permission of freeforms.com -->
are comments, but
<!-- new cars, used cars, import cars, foreign cars, domestic cars -->
Is definitely spam. It's just like hidden text. It might be on-topic, but still hidden text.
The line you posted might be OK on a page that didn't already make the subject obvious, but then I'd recommend making the subject obvious in the <title>, <description>, and <body> text, rather than trying to load up the page with commented keywords.
I support Google's position not to allow this, because it is an obvious trick and easy to do. So, if everyone does it (even if the commented keywords are 100% on-topic), then the result is that the size of Web pages will increase, and then all the competitive sites will be right back where they were before, except that the internet will now be 30% slower, Google's cache 30% larger (with 30% fewer sites, possibly), and the user experience will be worse - with pages taking 30% longer to load.
Be careful. The more successful you are, the bigger target you are.
Jim
It also means it is useless to use them for keyword stuffing.
What it will definitely do is give a human reviewer, should one visit, a hint to look further at your site for any other attempted 'underhandedness'.
Jim
I see no reason why it could be considered spam unless the words in the comment out tags were totally unrelated.
Just my thoughts.
If your making your text hard to read your certainly not doing it for the benefit of the user, your likely doing it to try and spam a search engine.
You can try and justify it to yourself, but you can't justify it to an algorithm hunting it down or a competitor so easily.
but what if it's under something that's not part of the main site like miscelleous policies that everyone knows. In other words, forms have fine prints for a reason--it is to not detract the reader from the main area of the form and it's just there for legal purposes.
Some engines do, some don't - Not sure which
With very great respect for your opinion and experience, do you know or do you not know?
This is what I know:
If you go to the search engine web sites and read their faqs they will tell you what they consider spam, and comment tag stuffing is not one of them.
The reason why comment tag stuffing isn't considered spam (and does not boost your ranking) is that the Search Engines examine text and the logical hierarchical structure of a page to determine what a page is about.
A commented out section is ignored as "content" because fundamentally and essentially it is not content. For example, JavaScript and CSS are ignored.
Comment tag stuffing belongs in the realm of urban legends as far as SEO is concerned, and anybody who stuffed their coment tags would only be betraying their lack of understanding of how a search engine algorithm works.
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:51 am (utc) on April 24, 2003]
Right. Comment tags exist *solely* for the use by the person coding the page. They are invisible to the web surfer, and they *weren't* created in the specs for search engines at all. If any SE has an algo tricked by comment tags, shame on them for bad programming. And, I can see a page designer using a keyword stuffed tag as a note to himself as to what keywords this page is specifically targeting.
And, I can see a page designer using a keyword stuffed tag as a note to himself as to what keywords this page is specifically targeting.
You're right, and why would anybody want to broadcast that?
