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Could Too Many Comments Hurt Your Blog Post?

Real Estate Agent with Dakno Marketing

June 25, 2007 06:18 PM

I started thinking about this the last night and thought I would throw this out here to get other people’s opinion. Could too many comments devalue your post in the eyes of Google? Think about it for a second. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines clearly states "Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)." But you will often see post containing many links to external resources or examples. In addition, every comment contains a link to the person’s profile page. On top of all of that, many people will add links inside of their comments. Would Google actually penalize a blog post for being so popular? My guess is that they are smarter than that.

Anytime I try to determine the positive (or negative) SEO value, I always like to weigh the facts. So below are some facts that support both cases. There are actually some compelling cases for both sides.

Making a Case that Google Does Not Penalize Popular Blogs with Comments Containing More Than 100 links

Google loves Blogs, and popular blogs get lots of comments and links. You would think Google is smart enough to account for this in their algorithm.

Most comments link to other pages inside of ActiveRain and not to external pages.

The comment links contain nofollow tags thus telling search engines not to pass on juice to those links (and thus saving the juice for the "real" links?)

ARDELL’s blog post with 250 comments shows up on page one for the search phrase "bait and switch link"

Making a Case that Google Does Penalize Popular Blogs With Comments Containing More Than 100 links

The Google Guidelines clearly says that pages should not contain more than 100 links.

Google is not just counting external links. We know this because Google’s guidelines says, "If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages."

Could ARDELL’s post be even higher in Google if she didn’t have as many comments?

What Do You think?

I would like your opinion, and especially the other SEO geeks out there. Has anyone seen any sites that address this? Does Google ding you for too many comments? Should Blogs implement a paging system for comments to avoid this?

Brad Carroll

Dakno Marketing
A Real Estate Web Design Company

Comments (23)
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Chris Griffith

Downing-Frye Realty, Bonita Springs, FL - Bonita Springs, FL

Bonita Springs Listing Agent

Geeze, I don't think this thought had ever crossed my mind until now. Now we have to blog, but not THAT well to get TOO many comments.

Jun 25, 2007 09:55 PM

S. Leanne Paynter ☼ Broward County, FL

United Realty Group, Inc. - Davie, FL

Davie, Plantation, Cooper City & Weston Specialist

I can't help but wonder if by "guidelines" sometimes Google means just that... guidelines... and they/their algorithms are able to break the rules under a certain set of circumstances. Didn't their guidelines at one time state that there should be fewer than 50 links? Also, perhaps they treat blogs differently (vs. more static web pages). Blogs are meant to be interactive.

Jun 26, 2007 12:24 AM

Joan Mirantz

Homequest Real Estate - Concord, NH

Realtor, GRI, CBR, SRES - Concord New Hampshire

Boy ...this one is going to get everyone thinking!

I haven't a clue, but would be willingto bet that Leanne Paynter hit the nail on the head.

Maybe the powers that be can answer your ???

Jun 26, 2007 02:45 AM

Brad Carroll

Dakno Marketing - Knightdale, NC

Real Estate Web Designer

Mana: I would have to agree with you. I think the big G would be smarter than that.

Jaushik: I would love to hear Karen's opinion on this one as well.

Chris: I wouldn't worry about that. After all the main point of blogging is to communicate with readers and get them to respond. Again, Google has some VERY complex algos. I would bet they account for things like this.

Leanne: Agreed. But this makes me wonder. What else on their guidelines are simply suggestions that can be bent?

Joan: That's exactly what I wanted to do with this post. Get people thinking about things like this. Unfortunately, SEO is not exactly black and white. I think their are some firm rules and general guidelines to go by. Following these guidelines can give you great placement. But it gets a little more tricky when you really start digging into the finer points of SEO.

Maybe I am splitting hairs or reading too much into this. But this is my passion (boy am I a geek) so I love discussing topics like this!

Jun 26, 2007 04:28 AM

marti garaughty

garaughty.com - Montreal, QC

a highly caffeinated creative type...

Wow Brad, that is really food for thought, not that I'm getting 100 comments on any of my blogs right now but... I guess the lesson in Google's eyes is to be successful but not too successful. As always, a thought provoking post.

realtor marketing tools, closing gifts, garaughty.com

Jun 26, 2007 04:50 AM

Angie Vandenbergh

Crye-Leike, Realtors - Memphis, TN

A Crye-Leike Blogger

I don't think this hurts you. I don't believe google just counts total links on a page. I think there is more to it than that. I think they look at other things about the links, reciprocal linking, and where the links are going etc. I just don't think it is as simple as counting 100 links. There are a lot of good, quality sites with over 100 links on a page.

I look at it this way - from a user perspective adding paging or changing the design to have less than 100 links is not necessarily going to be a benefit. I think google is first and foremost about trying to achieve good search results for sites that are considerate to their users. Yes, you could have an endless debate over how much design you do for seo and how much for a user... there is obviously a fine line there. But I am not going to worry about pages that have over 100 links. Now if the links are meaningless that's different.

Jun 26, 2007 06:28 AM

Vicki Watzlawick

CORE Realty (The Watz Team) - Algonquin, IL

Illinois Foreclosure Expert, The Watz Team

Brad Do the search engines have a way of differentiating links from comments or are all comments considered links? I just thought perhaps they dont count links the same way on blogs?? I know I was penalized by Google last year for having more then 50 links on a page, so I split mine up on two pages.

Jun 26, 2007 06:38 AM

Brad Carroll

Dakno Marketing - Knightdale, NC

Real Estate Web Designer

Vicki: It's not that all comments are considered links, but each comment links to a person's profile on Active Rain, in addition, many people will place links inside of their comments to other post or websites. I have to believe with the amount of technology they have, they are smart enough to know that these are links from comments. After all this is the same company that has a patent to analyze sentence structure to identify duplicate content and authors!

Jun 26, 2007 07:57 AM

Maureen Maureen

Orangeburg, NY

Don't think this is something I'll ever have to worry about. I'd be more interested in whether google gives weight to blogs with no comments. Like my other blog or many localism posts.

Jun 26, 2007 08:03 AM

Brad Carroll

Dakno Marketing - Knightdale, NC

Real Estate Web Designer

Wow, think about this... Maureen raises a good point. What if the opposite is true. Do you think Google takes into account the amount of comments in determining the value? That would make sense. Popular blogs gets lots of comments. Google already uses backlinks to determin how popular a page is. What if they used the amount of comments to determine how popular a post is?! This is exactly why I love topics like this. It really gives us a chance to explore and come up with lots of good theories. I know that it's all just hearsay but still good fun!

Jun 26, 2007 08:09 AM

Scott Hoag

FBC Mortgage - Clearwater, FL

Preferred Lender / Mortgage Company

I don't know how you do that box thing with your _subscribe to this blog_ message in it, but I want one!!

Jun 26, 2007 03:41 PM

Darrel Quebedeaux

Evergreen Realty & Associates Inc. - Newport Coast, CA

Personally I don't think Google would penalize for too many comments. If people take the time to comment means not only are they reading the blog but they found something relevant to them in it.

Jun 26, 2007 07:46 PM

New Jersey Real Estate James Boyer Morris, Essex & Union County NJ Realtor

RE/MAX Properties Unlimited, Real Estate - Morristown, NJ

The more comments the better, and if they come in over time, even better yet.

As far as linking out cutting down on the PR of the page, I have read arguments both ways. I am beginning to believe that linking out does not reduce the PR of the page being linked from. Having 5 links out I believe does reduce the value of each of those links as compared to 1 or 2 links out.

Jim

Jun 27, 2007 02:57 AM

Caroline Carrara

EWM/Christie's-Las Olas, Real Estate - Fort Lauderdale, FL

Hmm, no idea honestly, and that's why I am here to learn...

Jun 27, 2007 02:12 PM

Tim O'Keefe

Spider Juice Technologies - Torrance, CA

Social SEO And Reputation Marketing

I would think the ever changing nature and growth of the page would make up for any abundance of links. Additionally, it is easy to detect growth of links (in a blog like fashion)where today is larger than yesterday, which was larger than the day before, and so on. VS a Zeus like link directory farm.

I would also add to take with a grain of salt whatever Google says as they have yet to put out an official SEM book. If they did I would guess it would be one sentence. That sentence would say "Buy Adwords".

Real Estate SEO

Jun 28, 2007 04:43 AM

Jordan M. Mackey

Overland Park Real Estate (No association with Inc) - Overland Park, KS

Overland Park Real Estate ::

LoL At Tim for the random link :-P Plays well into the topic of the article ;-)

Brad - I was going to pop in and say I've be reading some information that with Google Universal Search, they have added or actually have been adding blog updates to their Algo. Blog comments is one of them and like stated above I know I have seen in my own network of blogs and people I work with that articles with comments perform much better than dead or no comment articles.

Another interesting thing that I've seen happen is a not very powerful blog write an article, have it syndicated by a much larger blog and even with a link back the larger blog gets the "Engine Credit". Due to the new factors of readership and Google tracking usage and hits.

Google Analytics isn't just a free tool peps... :-P Its an easier way for Google to revamp their Algorithm...

Jun 28, 2007 05:56 AM

Jeff R. Geoghan

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage - Lancaster, PA

REALTOR, Marketing Manager

I would venture that for the majority of us, our posts don't ever usually get to 100 comments. If we have one or two a month out of 30, then our consistent linking strategy would far outweigh any negative points that G. assigns to the 100+ commented posts. Besides, the majority of Rainers RE agents are posting good local content posts that will get ranked high for search terms in their market. These same local content posts simply won't generate 100+ comments, not even close I'd wager.

Hmm?

Jun 28, 2007 07:59 AM

Brad Carroll

Dakno Marketing - Knightdale, NC

Real Estate Web Designer

Scott: It's just a snippet of code I add to the bottom of my post. I just grabbed the code that ActiveRain uses in the standard "subscribe to blog" link and pasted it into my code. I should do a post on how to create the box!

Jun 28, 2007 06:26 PM

Karen Luke

South Metro Property Management, LLC - McDonough, GA

Henry County Real Estate

Wow. Should I comment or not. Will I penalize Brad if I do? I don't think so.

Thanks for the opportunity to ponder.

Aug 22, 2007 02:27 AM

Karina Kfuri

Leal USA Realty 561-350-3503 ( FALO PORTUGUES) - Delray Beach, FL

Leal, Florida Broker - FALO PORTUGUES!

THanks for the info. I recently was penalized by google and can't figure why. Even if I google my first and last name it doesn't show my site on the first page http://www.karinaleal.com

I sent an email to google and haven't received any answers yet. I used to get at least 10 leads daily from my site and now am down to zero...

If you would have any additional information, please do let me know. Thanks, Karina.

Nov 18, 2009 04:17 AM

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