HTML Comments

[freedata]

On one of my my web pages, I have a list of all
countries in side a comment block.
It looks like this:
<!-- Afghanisthan,A....... -->
Will this cause my site to be penalized by SEs?
Thanks

[edit_g]

Will this cause my site to be penalized by SEs?

Why is it there in the first place?

[freedata]

I saw this on one of the sites thats ranked high (top 10) and really liked that idea. I want to take it off if it can cause any penalty.

[edit_g]

You'd most likely fail a manual review. I think, also, that the site was ranking highly for other reasons, rather than text in comments. Comments aren't exactly a factor which is given a high weight by the Google algo IMO.

[pageoneresults]

More information on HTML Comments can be found here...

3.2.4 Comments [w3.org]

Note that HTML comments are treated as markup by indexing spiders.

[freedata]

Thanks for the advise.

>>I think, also, that the site was ranking highly for other reasons, rather than text in comments.

Actually that site was about keyword and it had a list of all cities in comments.

When I searched for keyword + City this page came up in top 10 SERP. The only place the city was on the page was in comment (in visible) eventhough the keyword was repeated and visible.

[edit_g]

The only place the city was on the page was in comment (in visible) eventhough the keyword was repeated and visible.

Take a look at both the external and internal links pointing to the page as well.