Posts with no comments -- Does it hurt rankings?

[londrum]

I've got an events section on my site which allows user comments at the end of each event (each event is one post)
hardly any of these posts get comments, and as the date of the event passes obviously they don't get any more comments after that.

I'm wondering if i should just turned the whole comment section off and scrap it, because having loads of posts with no engagement probably doesn't look too good to google.

Does anyone know if low user engagement actually hurts rankings?

just to clarify, my page views are fine... it's just the user engagement in the comments that is low (or non-existant)

[tangor]

G routinely ignores comments and has not actively indexed them for quite some time. To have or not is as you think fit FOR YOUR SITE.

I turned off comments to articles years ago since the vast majority rarely stayed on topic!

Also keep in mind that some browsers and ad blockers can kill third party stuff which might be one reason you are not seeing any comment traffic.

[christianz]

You are overthinking it. If comments improve your site/engagement/UX, they should be there and don't let search engines dictate how your site is.