In his latest “Webmaster Help” video, Google’s Matt Cutts answers a question that a lot of people have probably wondered, particularly since Google launched the Panda update in 2011: how do the comments on your blog affect how Google sees the quality of your pages?
The exact wording of the question was:
Should I correct the grammar on comments to my WordPress blog? Should I not approve comments with poor grammar? Will approving comments with grammar issues affect my page’s quality rating?
Long story short: don’t worry about it.
“I wouldn’t worry about the grammar in your comments. As long as the grammar on your own page is fine, you know, there are people on the Internet, and they write things, and it doesn’t always make sense. You can see nonsense comments, you know, on YouTube and other large properties, and that doesn’t mean a YouTube video won’t be able to rank. Just make sure that your own content is high quality, and you might want to make sure that people aren’t leaving spam comments. You know, if you’ve got a bot, than they might leave bad grammar, but if it’s a real person, and they’re leaving a comment, and the grammar is not slightly perfect, that usually reflects more on them than it does on your site, so I wouldn’t stress out about that.”
You would think the spam would reflect more on them too, but go ahead and continue stressing out about that.
Images via YouTube