If you're like me, your eyes glaze over and you feel comatose when trying to understand all the jargon you have to wade through when trying to comply with Google's various terms and suggested practices. If you have a blog where comments are allowed, or any other kind of forum, you really need to understand Google's take on user-generated content. If one department of Google frowns on something or recommends something, it's a sure bet the other departments are in on it.
Why Moderate Comments?
It's really simple, as Google pointed out. YOU are responsible for ALL content on your site and it doesn't matter if you generate that content or your visitors do. Advertisers don't want their ads associated with questionable content and neither should you.
When you moderate comments, you can circumvent problems with your content. We're talking about where the author links point to as well as the text within the comments. If you want to adhere to Google's content guidelines, the easiest way to fall out of grace is by letting the bad stuff exist on your site.
Getting Accounts Disabled or Banned
There's a lot of debate going on about why certain AdSense accounts get disabled or banned. I'm willing to bet that advertisers will block specific domains because of unsavory content in the comments section. When you get enough blocks, I'm sure Google will disable your account and may ban you completely if you control more than one domain like that.
Of course, I'm just guessing. There are plenty of other reasons, such as click fraud, but I don't know the ins and outs and I don't want to speculate on those other reasons.
When Matt Cutts Talks, I Listen
I read Matt's blog on a regular basis and I view the webmaster videos he has up on YouTube. He answers a lot of questions and the best answers (in my opinion) are those that he doesn't provide directly.
One example is when he said he doesn't use tags on his blog and explains that he doesn't think we need to let them steal link juice from the more important pages. He's not telling you not to use them but you should read between the lines, so to speak.
Anyway, since Matt Cutts is the head of the Google web spam team, it makes a lot of sense to listen to what he has to say, or read about it. Sometimes it's the stuff that isn't quite that obvious that will come up and bite you in the butt.
But Moderating Comments is Hard!
If you're not prepared to moderate comments, you need to be prepared for negative results. In other words, if you can't moderate comments on a blog, you're better off turning off comments altogether. If you have a forum that Google can index and you don't want to moderate, you might as well close the forum off from Google.
No one says you have to moderate comments immediately. Your site should display a message that comments are moderated when you have it set up that way. Moderating once a day is fine, but I think once a week is bit crazy (although I know at least one person that does that).
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This article is published as: SEO Tip: Moderate All Comments or Suffer the Wrath of Google
Hey RT,
I totally agree with your conclusion. However, I've found that an even easier solution is to simply stop using the wordpress comment system altogether. Instead, I just embed facebook comments. My friends, who's opinions of my posts I actually care about, can still opine. But people who show up just looking for a "free" backlink are usually discouraged. A win-win as far as I'm concerned :-)
Todd Morris recently posted..Blowing Up Claymores At Camp Blanding
Todd, the facebook commenting system sounds so intriguing. Greatly reduces spam comments, huh? Sounds great to me!
Grandma Stories recently posted..Super Bowl Snacks – BLT Dip and Buffalo Chicken Dip Recipes for Super Bowl Sunday
Then again, it might depend on the kind of blog a person has. For mine, I wouldn't want all the comments and my replies showing up on Facebook all the time.
Yeah, google can be unbelievably anal about things like that. ;p
Turn off comments!! LOL.
One more thing, Check for broken links, especially in the comments area. Many uses the comment to build links when they start a site and many abandons the sites when it fails to take off. Google hates them too.
When I had my comments running, there will be 2 or 3 dead links found every alternate days. The first time I ran the broken link checker, it returned more than 300 broken links, the bulk of it from my comment section.
There are many free plugins available to check for broken links.
Costa recently posted..Can You Visualize How Big Is Your Blog
I knew you'd like it, Costa, but this doesn't have anything to do with YOUR comment section. :-)
The broken link checking is a good idea and a lot of people don't bother, much to their own detriment. I thought about mentioning it but then I realized it doesn't really have anything to do with moderation.
I have a doubt. This applies to spam links, right? In that case, is the "nofollow" attribute of any use?
hari recently posted..A new look – sitewide
Not just spam links. Links to "bad neighborhoods" are not necessarily spam links. Adult sites, gambling sites, etc. can all be considered unsavory to advertisers.
As far as "nofollow" goes, we're not talking about link juice – we're talking about bad links to bad places – the advertisers don't care whether they're followed or not when their ads about baby cribs appear next to links or comments about abortion, for example.
Just my 2 cents, Blogs are meant to be a social platform, as such they should be updated on a regular basis.
If this is done and comments are set for approval, I don't see the problem,just chuck out the crap and keep the good comments to add content to your site.
wedding dj recently posted..Karaoke Disco
Depends what kind of blog you are using it suppose not to be so hard to moderate comments but still it can take a LOT of precious time.
The ability to moderate comments as they are added to your blog can be very handy if you want to catch any comment spam before it reaches your page.