Are Comment Tags a Problem?

[JudgeJeffries]

WPG's free advice booklet on optimisation indicates that you should stuff the comment tag with a list of keywords. Does Google read comment tags and is it spamming or is it OK?

[Yidaki]

It's useless. It increases your page size. Comments are to comment html code - nothing else.

[BigDave]

<sarcasm>What a novel idea, I bet those PhDs at google never thought of that!</sarcasm>

If they can figure out what a <title> tag looks like, don't you think they could figure out what a comment looks like?

In addition to the size issue, you run an additional risk. If someone does a hand check of your site, that would be a mark of someone who is trying to spam. They will look much deeper for any real infractions.

[nancyb]

Since stuffing comment tags with keywords is of no help to your visitors since it is not visible text, I would assume Google sees this as a form of spam. However, since they apparently do not read comment tags they may not penalize for it. You are increasing the size of your page and slowing the download speed for no gain.

[austtr]

In my pet areas stuffed comments appear in plague proportions. Many of the well ranked sites do it despite what Googles guidelines say.

I suspect their top results are due to the fact that they have spent a lot of time generating links and has nothing to do with the comments tags.

What is obvious is that Google does not penalise for it...

[korkus2000]

Google does not index comments. Stuff all day long. You shouldn't get a penalty. Will it help for Google, no.

[fathom]

WPG's free advice booklet on optimisation indicates that you should stuff the comment tag with a list of keywords. Does Google read comment tags and is it spamming or is it OK?

I helped right that stuff (and many others) the reference is pre-year 2000 -- someone there still believes it's valid - it is not.

Please don't hold this against me - was younger then and much more foolish. ;)

[johnraphone]

That is definately pre-2000. It doesn't work now adays and is just a waste of bandwidth. Spend more time on getting incoming links and you'll do good.

[allanp73]

I hate to break this to the non-believers out there, but Google does index comments tags.
I noticed this because I use them and tested the belief by using unique text in them.
Anyone who has a background in programming knows that comments are useful in debugging. I don't stuff them with keywords, but there are content relevant words present in my comments tags. I don't know how much they have helped my ranking, but I do notice that Google will index them.

[jomaxx]

Google does not index comment tags. I'd love to see any example of it doing so.

[ga_ga]

If I find my site listed under heydgffsdwrejbfgrtdge anytime soon, I guess Google does index keywords in comments. grin.

[allanp73]

Okay... you're right. Google does not index comments. At one time I remember testing this and it worked. Now running the same test I realize that it is no longer true. :( Does anyone have any humble pie?

[Key_Master]

I have some reasons to believe Teoma uses info from comment tags. I can't tell if they are using the info in the comment tags for theming purposes or what. Something is going on there though.

[rfgdxm1]

>Google does not index comments. Stuff all day long. You shouldn't get a penalty.

Right. By definition, comment tags are for the use of the person coding the page, and invisible to the surfer. Thus they should neither be indexed, or penalized for.

[WebSocks]

Would comment tags be useful for vision impaired?

[sem4u]

Well comment tags are only shown in the actual HTML code, so no.

You would be better off putting ALT text into images and buttons.