Can Archiving/Deleting Old Comments Affect Ranking of a blog post?

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One of the blog posts on my parenting blog ranks well and gets more than 2000 visits a day. It was published last year and over the time various visitors commented queries and my long replies to them increased post's length. now as the comments are around 350, it is taking 28 seconds to load and I am worried that might affect the ranking. i.e. in near future it may reduce the ranking.
My queries are
1. Will archiving/deleting these long/ all old comments affect the ranking? What can be done? like including them in contents instead of removing?
2. Can increased load speed affect the ranking of the post?

NOTE: Need it for desktop only as the mobile has AMP view

Blogging Experts' valuable advice requested.
#affect #archiving or deleting #blog #comments #post #ranking
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    The only reason people visit web pages is for the content. I would never remove content in order to increase page speed unless the comments are garbage and contribute nothing to the article/conversation, in which case, they never should have been approved to begin with.

    User generated content - especially if it is good - can have a tremendous positive effect and shouldn't be slowing down your page load speed much, if at all. If it is, there's something wrong with how they are being loaded by the website software. Assuming this is a WordPress site, you can try the suggestions in this article for speeding up your comments - https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-comments/
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    • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
      When I compared that post with others, the comments were only difference.
      This particular post take 28 secs to load while others 10secs. I have done proper website optimisation so no other possibilities too.
      Thing is WordPress fetches the avatar from Gravatar so may be that could be the reason.
      Anyways I did a small change from Wordpress Discussion Settings. I set the option of showing only 50 comments at a time, dividing them in pages.
      These comments are very valuable. They are the reason of the page ranking.
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    • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
      When I compared this post with other faster loading posts, the comments were only difference.
      I suspect the commenters profile pics are fetched from gravatar by WP which could be the reason of load speed increment.
      I just made a setting change, Wordpress-> Discussions-> Divide the comments, Show latest 50 only.
      These comments are valuable. It is the main reason behind the high ranking of the post.
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    • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
      Thanks for your reply.
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  • Profile picture of the author samvin
    If it your website the sure your can remove the comments, if it is third party website then there is certain restriction will be.
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  • Profile picture of the author expmrb
    No, I don't think that loading speed is going to hurt your rankings unless it shows a time out. And if the comments are good then why do you wanna delete them?
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  • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
    According to my personal experience the loading speed affects the ranking. Comments are good but what's the use if the page is pushed down in the google because of the load speed? The topic is from tough competition and my competitors have pages with plain texts which load very fast.
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  • Profile picture of the author ARVolund
    Originally Posted by sapvibha View Post

    One of the blog posts on my parenting blog ranks well and gets more than 2000 visits a day. It was published last year and over the time various visitors commented queries and my long replies to them increased post's length. now as the comments are around 350, it is taking 28 seconds to load and I am worried that might affect the ranking. i.e. in near future it may reduce the ranking.
    My queries are
    1. Will archiving/deleting these long/ all old comments affect the ranking? What can be done? like including them in contents instead of removing?
    2. Can increased load speed affect the ranking of the post?

    NOTE: Need it for desktop only as the mobile has AMP view

    Blogging Experts' valuable advice requested.
    Removing content can hurt your rankings but so can a slow page. Slow pages also hurt your conversion a great deal. 50% of people will give up on a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

    You should be able to set it up so not all the comments load on the first page. Limit the number which initially load and then people can click through all of them if they want.

    Originally Posted by expmrb View Post

    No, I don't think that loading speed is going to hurt your rankings unless it shows a time out. And if the comments are good then why do you wanna delete them?
    Yes page speed does matter especially on mobile which now accounts for ~60% of all traffic. That plus slow pages are a major conversion killer as well. If a site is slow then it needs to be fixed if you want to rank well and get decent conversions.
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    • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
      There is simple setting in WP which when active loads only predefined number of comments and reduces the load speed. Its working perfectly now. Speed improved with all comments there.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Comments are content, so definitely keep the comments. No deleting.

    1: Deleting could affect your ranking negatively. Google would see this rich, meaty page, steadily losing content. Not good.

    3: Yes; but deleting comments hurts your post more than helping it.

    Keep em.

    Do you use a CDN? Invest in one to speed things up, as hosting images off of your server is a big difference maker.
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    • Profile picture of the author sapvibha
      I found the solution already. Its working perfectly. There is simple setting in WP for loading only first 10 comments for each post. So Now it takes less time to load, comments are also there.
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