Google Using Comments As User Engagement Signal?

[Jared]

From Sugar Rae's newsletter:

Marie Haynes claims that Google's Gary Illyes stated at PubCon that they use comments to measure user engagement - I say "claims" because I've yet to find an official write up from a search outlet on this - which I find odd. This comment seems like something that would have merited one. I have no idea if this was a direct quote or interpretation.

Commenting is an sign of high engagement, obviously, so it would make sense. Still, is this not something that could be abused by craftier SEOs? Perhaps that's why it's been so hush-hush?

 

[knownerror]

Well. I'll throw this into the thread. I was testing out Disqus on my site and used it on one page. The day I got a comment, the page began to tank in traffic. 3 days later the page is down 60%. Removed that from the page and traffic is skyrocketing back up. Never using comments on anything of value again. Sticking to only news posts. Geese.

Commenting is an sign of high engagement, obviously, so it would make sense. Still, is this not something that could be abused by craftier SEOs?

Have done this same sorta thing but with updating pages. I find pages that are frequently updated with new information seem to get a boost in traffic from that regularly. A product review company posted on this forum was doing the same sort of thing.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I've not seen any personal proof of this. I've actually abandoned all comments on my sites.

I had a page at one time ranking for a 14,000 volume term. It had a quiz on it and then I prompted people to discuss the results in the comments. It got up to 600+ comments before I sold the site.

The question becomes, did I get all of those comments due to the traffic of having increasingly ranked better and better, or did I keep ranking better and better due to the comments?

Of course that page had crazy dwell time due to the quiz too.

On the other hand I've had pages with a lot of comments that trickled in over time never rise to the level that one did. It might be a signal and if it is it's a weak one.

I'd hate to be the poor sap without proper HTML markup where Google had a hard time understanding what was main content and what was comments.

If you can make use of comments and can deal with moderating it, go for it. Otherwise, I wouldn't think of it at all in terms of SEO. I'd be thinking about how it affects human behavior and if it's positive or negative for your profits.

What I decided was it was positive... but I wanted it off-site where the impact could spread, versus act as social proof on-site. You can have both, of course, but I picked my poison.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Who gives a flying fuck what Marie Haynes thinks.

Never ranked a site for anything.
Latched onto the "penalty removal niche" because she couldn't rank anything.
Now finds her position obsolete due to latest Penguin and so is, likely, misquoting shit to make her sound relevant.

I'd get better SEO advice from an ingrown toenail.

 

[Andrewkar]

That's something everyone has to test I believe. I'm on the fance right now, implementing disqus, using WP system or just sending users to FB page so they can discus. Probably I will take FB option because of engagement etc.