Does Google read HTML comments?

<!-- comments stuffed with keywords -->

[guezo2]

I'm wondering if Google (Googlebot) reads HTML comments. Many sites use them to put lots of keywords...
I think that comments are ignored as well as META keywords?

[Macguru]

Yes it does read them, both comments and meta keywords. But dont give it much value. I have seen it use them as a description for pages with no visible text. Non visible ereas are generally of poor value.

IMHO, if you use them, dont stuff them.

[WebGuerrilla]

They may look at them, but it doesn't appear that words in comment tags will be returned as a match for a search.

If for example, you do any searches for any common html editor comments like "BeginEditable" (Dreamweaver template comment) you will only get back pages that have html errors or that discuss the comment tag in the body of the tag. If comments were really being indexed, that search should return thousands of pages.