In counting words for a "long article," do comments count in the word count?

[bizzer]

As Moz and others have proven, long articles help ranking, linking and sharing.  My question is, do the comments at the end of an article count in the word count as Google counts it.

[Chris.Menke]

It feels like you're paying to much attention to the grains of sand and not enough attention to the beach. Think at scale--do you really want to be editing everyone's comments for ever and ever?  How would your audience think about that? If you're audience is prone to misspelings and grammer errors (and whose isn't) so be it.  One comment is worth a few errors and google's not going to ding you for that.

Instead, think about how you can get more people who are going to make those errors to your site. Don't knock your audience if they're engaging with your content.

[bizzer]

I researched the spelling and grammar thing, and you re correct, it turns out it is not something that Google looks at, although there is a correlation between writing quality and ranking, for obvious reasons.  Here's Cutts on the subject:

http://get.uk.com/page.php?article=1724&name=Better+Spelling+Equals+Better+Search+Results+%255BGOOGLE%255D

[BenjaminMorel]

I'm definitely not saying that if you write a long post it won't be engaging - my last YouMoz post was over 2,000 words long, has had more than 40 comments and been tweeted about more than 400 times (self plug over). Long, engaging content that gets people talking is just as good as short content that gets people talking!

My point - and I think Chris's - was that if your article can be written in 200 words, don't put a load of filler in there to get to 1,000 because that's longer. You're likely to get less engagement, and so less tweets, shares, +1s, and backlinks. And when it comes to the ranking algo's that social interaction and linking is what you need to aim for, not length of article.

As an aside, I can't remember the last time Seth Godin wrote more than a couple of hundred words - and he seems to be doing alright!

I've not heard of Google looking at spelling and grammar specifically - could you point me to where you heard that, as I'd be interested in seeing it? But again, that could actually be an engagement question: "are people more likely to comment on a post if other comments are well written?" The thing about comments is that they somebody else's voice, not yours, so if you start editing those people's voices they may feel a bit aggrieved and so may be less likely to comment in the future. That will drive down the number of tweets, share, links etc and so adversely affect your SEO.

[bizzer]

Thanks for your input.

"I would tend to agree with Chris though. Thinking about quality, engagement, and relevance will get you much more in the long term than just writing long articles that don't engage people."

There seems to be the assumption that if I write a long page, it won't be engaging.  That's in incorrect assumption.

One thing this is making me think about now too is this:  I think I should edit some of the commenter's writing.  I know Google marks down pages for misspelling and poor writing, however it is that they judge the writing. My commenters are of very low intelligence (but great ad clickers!), and their comments reflect that. I don't want to get marked down for that.

[BenjaminMorel]

Search engines look at the content on all of your page, so comments will count as well. Get lots of engagement on a short article and you've got as many words on the page as if you'd written a short article and got no comments.

I would tend to agree with Chris though. Thinking about quality, engagement, and relevance will get you much more in the long term than just writing long articles that don't engage people.

[Chris.Menke]

Yes, I read that too.  I'm sure you noticed the part about

"Content Rich Sites Get More Links

People feel content is so valuable that they are willing to link to in-depth content more than they are willing to link to content that is short."

Don't confuse google liking links with google liking content.  Google likes links--the content...not as big of a big deal (for google).

[bizzer]

Appreciate the reply. But what you're saying isn't really supported by Moz and others' own research. (See this article, there are others.) It's proven that Google loves long article.  Obviously, a page needs all the other factors, such as is the page even good, are their social shares, etc, but all things being equal, a long page is better than a short page as far a ranking is concerned (conversion is a whole other topic).

b=But what I did get out of your response is that comments DO count, and that Google in fact likes to see comments. Can you explain exactly what you mean about "the fact that the page has visitor profiles that have commented on it?" When you say "visitor profiles" are you saying the name in the comment must link to a profile of a registered member, as opposed to a comment that was made by an unregistered user comment and therefore does not link to any user profile?

[Chris.Menke]

Don't think about Google "counting" the words on your page--it doesn't really care about how many words it contains. The thing about words is that when used well, they can give others a reason to comment or share or like it--and shares and comments beget more shares and comments.  A six word page with 50 comments is a whole lot better than a 2000 word page with none.  In answer to your question, the comments on a page do count towards to the pages's content but the fact that the page has visitor profiles that have commented on it is where the real value is.