Wordpress Comments & Google- How Much Does Google Know?

[sitywyde]

I would like to ask a few questions, to those that know, and or maybe think they know.

We know that content is king, But do comments get indexed by Google? and if yes.... How much does Google know about the comment, and do they care?

Do they see a comment like an update to a post, or do they see and look for relevance in comment to the actual article or post?

In other words...If a blog is receiving comments hourly...Is this telling the Google robots that there is value here, based on social discussion... and do the bots look for relevancy in the comments to the topic, and what value do they hold on spam if approved "nice blog post, keep up the good work!"

Do they know which ip of the commenter, if it came from within your blog or externally?

If Google indexes a comment, (which I'm 98% sure they do, what value does it pass to the link that placed it )and what kind of value exists in a spam comment like "nice work!, love your blog" which im sure has been indexed tens of thousands of times...

Wordpress also has a feature that you can edit the comment from within...Does Google know when you edit that comment, and do they care?

I'm asking, because I and many others I'm sure would like to know...

Do comments matter on your blog, in regards to SERP position.

So those that know...Let us know!

[dburk]

Hi sitywyde,

Good question!

The answer is that Google will devalue any web pages that permit comment spam. Once they devalue those pages they will pass no link juice. The websites that permit that web spam will suffer in rankings, and in certain egregious cases they will be de-indexed for allowing that web spam to pollute the World Wide Web.

As Web spammers escalate their vicious attacks on unsuspecting bloggers you will likely see an all out war on web spammers. Their activity is being documented and it will become part of their permanent reputation, impossible to erase. Web spammers may at some point have to change their names and hide their past identity to ever hope to regain any respectability.

[David Judge]

In my experience it's based on content of the comment as this impacts the relevancy of the page and the outbound link within the comment (name of person leaving comment or links within comment).

I had a whole bunch of spam comments placed on my site so I edited each comment and removed the outbound url and made them more relevant to the post.

Google passed the PR4 to the posts and still indexed and ranked the site for the keywords I was targeting.

[sitywyde]

To add to the discussion... Watch Video

Comments-How Much Does Google Know? (WarriorForum...

[InternetMarketingIQ]

WebPro News covered this comment recently. They supposedly interviewed a Google Engineer and his statments on comments are not what you want to hear. He said Google places little value on comments and off topic comments just dillute the value of the real content, which certainly implies that comments are crawled.

Google knows just about everything about sites... automatically. You can't really hide your sites from them as they are a registrar and most people used shared hosting.

The only way to really mask sites from Google is to register in Proxy and put them on different IP Addresses. Even then simple slip ups in cross linking or content sharing could tip them off.

But ultimately most people in the IM niche only comment for Back Link purposes and waste a lot of time.

If your comments are targeted and relevant then the links themselves should generate your traffic.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi sitywyde,

Good question!

The answer is that Google will devalue any web pages that permit comment spam. Once they devalue those pages they will pass no link juice.

Seriously D where do you come up with this stuff?

I mean I hate spamming in comments too but there are ton loads of sites that are not up on their spam protection and still pass link juice.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Seriously D where do you come up with this stuff?

I mean I hate spamming in comments too but there are ton loads of sites that are not up on their spam protection and still pass link juice.

Hi Mike,

I got this stuff from Sergey Brin and Larry Page, perhaps you have heard of them? They first introduced this capability to the public in the original Backrub White Paper.

When you read this document you will understand that "sites" don't pass link juice, PR isn't assigned to "sites", it is assigned to individual web documents. So a website may have web pages that pass link juice, while at the same time, other pages on the same site may not.

Google refers to this ranking factor as Trust, they assign a Trust value to each page that is indexed and the amount of link juice that is passed is weighted by this Trust value. As a web page accumulates spam, as detected by Google, it lowers the Trust value for that page. A page with zero Trust will pass zero PageRank.

The exact method of measuring this Trust value, and the weighting factor algorithm, are among the most closely guarded secrets of all search engines.

[Clint Butler]

Comments in wordpress help increase the social recognition of your blog or website. Also, Google has adjusted its algorithm to index Facebook comments. So expect this to bring traffic to your site by way of long tail keywords as well. Discus comments aren't being indexed as regularly now so it seems the standard wordpress comments or Facebook comments is the way to go.

Regards,
Clint

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Mike,

I got this stuff from Sergey Brin and Larry Page, perhaps you have heard of them? They first introduced this capability to the public in the original Backrub White Paper.

Good that you finally read some good SEO stuff. But go ahead and show us all where Larry Says

"The answer is that Google will devalue ANY web pages that permit comment spam"

We'll all be waiting

Plenty perfectly legit webmasters are not up on their link spam controls and their sites do not get penalized to the point of passing no pagerank. If that were so then sites that use blog comments for links almost exclusively could not build up their PR and I've seen that with my own eyes.

When you read this document you will understand that "sites" don't pass link juice, PR isn't assigned to "sites", it is assigned to individual web documents.

Which was never in dispute. What is in dispute and utterly false is

"The answer is that Google will devalue any web pages that permit comment spam"

Some really bad cases? yes - ANY - no.

[paulgl]

Sure google indexes comments, but that has nothing to do with
whether they help. Facebook comments have got to be the
lowest of the low, if they are even on the map, of any value.
And since FB pages can be spammed ad nauseam....and
they are not even real links in comments anyway.

If you want a social link, use twitter. Even those are nofollow.

People mix up indexing with helping. Google indexes a whole
lot of garbage.

Instead of trying for the lowest of the low backlinks, why
not concentrate on links that will actually help?

Paul

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Good that you finally read some good SEO stuff. But go ahead and show us all where Larry Says

"The answer is that Google will devalue ANY web pages that permit comment spam"

We'll all be waiting

Plenty perfectly legit webmasters are not up on their link spam controls and their sites do not get penalized to the point of passing no pagerank. If that were so then sites that use blog comments for links almost exclusively could not build up their PR and I've seen that with my own eyes.

Which was never in dispute. What is in dispute and utterly false is

"The answer is that Google will devalue any web pages that permit comment spam"

Some really bad cases? yes - ANY - no.

Hi Mike,

I stand corrected, I should have said they devalue links from any pages where Google detects spam. It is certainly possible that you can have spam that goes undetected for a period of time, perhaps to never be detected.

Must you always be so vitriolic?

Good that you finally read some good SEO stuff.

Really?

Now you are being down right nasty.

I don't think anyone, except you, could have possible thought that my original reply was a direct quote. Perhaps it's time that you finally get around to reading some good stuff, seems I'm about a decade ahead of you.

Plenty perfectly legit webmasters are not up on their link spam controls and their sites do not get penalized to the point of passing no pagerank.

You still seem to struggle with fundemental concepts like "PR is assigned to individual pages, not websites." When a page's Trust is devalued due to spam it doesn't cause a sitewide penalty , yet you seem to be inferring that I somehow made that assertion, I did not. It looks to be yet another one of you straw man arguments that you have become infamous for on this board.

Let's just agree to disagree. I believe that Google does in fact devalue pages that contain excessive spam. If you want to go on record as having the opposite opinion, then so be it. I'm not here to prove you wrong, the truth will find a way.

[linkbuildr]

this is worth posting on the subject Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Hard facts about comment spam

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dburk

Really?

Now you are being down right nasty.

really Don. LOL Tellin a SEO professional that

"I got this stuff from Sergey Brin and Larry Page, perhaps you have heard of them?"

Wasn't a sarcasic putdown? As if I didn't know who larry page was? A little honesty perhaps?

ANyway keep up with the strawman about pages rather than Sites getting PR. No one stated anything else. All I commented on was your blanket statement about any site that allowed spam comments being unable to pass pagerank. Ton loads of sites do and you have admitted that was wrong on your part so I'm fine with it.