Can horrific grammar and spelling in comments hurt the value of an otherwise great page?
-
I've got a website whose pages get lots of comments. Tons of activity, which I would think Google would like (and seems to like). However -- I just can't put this nicely -- most commenters are not very bright. Their grammar and spelling is horrific. These are not foreigners who lack English skills, they are just about all primarily English speakers and the site is 99% US traffic. It's a low-income segment of the population.
So, I've been wondering recently if Google will mark down the value of the page due to the bad grammar and spelling in the comments, even if the page's content is otherwise very good and lengthy. I have read that they grammar and spelling into consideration when looking at the page, but would that include comments, or would they know they are comments and not judge a page on that?
It would be a pain, but maybe I should I run all the comments at least through a spell checker? And manually fix their grammar? Problem is I get about 40 comments a day.
And when I say bad grammar and spelling, I mean REALLY bad. Embarrassing.
-
I would argue that if this is the type of person who could be your customer you can keep it as is and let google index it. As you said, it is helping you in the short term. Upon any manual review, it would seem that it would pass easily, and that it is not any type of auto-generated spam or produced with the intention of manipulating pagerank or search results.
Could it get you filtered in the future? Maybe, but more likely maybe not. Is it helping bring in more of the same kind of people? I think it is. But I don't think you have a reason to shy away from such legitimate engagement.
-
I just thought I'd show you all what a typical comment looks like. as bad as this is, it's only about average. They can be much,much worse. And yes, it came in all caps, as many do.
I JUST GOTTEN THIS BUGET PHONE A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO AND I WANT ,,,, TO USE IT BUT I CN'T CONNECT WHAT SHOULD , I DO I NEED A PHONE REEL BAD CAUSE I'M THU THE GOVERMENT PROGRAM AND I DO HAVE MEDICAL-CAL AND I NEED A PHONE TO CONECT PEOPLE AND I'M ON A PROGRAM WITH THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES .AND IF I NEED TO B CONTACT I CAN'T SO WHAT I DO . I BEEN CALLING THE PHONE BUT THERE NO ANSWERS I'M VERY CONFUSE...
-
Good point. Some of the comments are unintelligible, so I might want to manually make them sound like at least a third grader wrote them.
The good thing about our not-so-bright readers is that they get confused and click lots of ads.
-
Flavour - schmavour!
the only thing in my world that hurts conversions - is the inablity to communicate! if the bad grammar does that, then I'd find a way to change it to work for you - rather than against you....
-
Leave the comments as is and do not worry about spelling. Google understands spelling mistakes and I don't think you'll receive any kind of penalty for it.
In fact, if the people commenting are the type of people you want on the site, then the mispellings will work in your favor. That same demographic is typing those horrific misspelled words in Google search and you have them right on page.
-
If the comments are useful (contextual relevant) and don't look spammy, leave them as is.
Will fixing the misspellings hurt you? Most likely no. A Google patent states: "content deemed to be unimportant if updated/changed, such as...comments...may be given relatively little weight or even ignored altogether when determining UA"
However, I would probably leave as is.
-
I don't think so. I have a feeling the grammar/spelling adds to the flavor of your search results and that they help to bring in more folks who are likely to engage in similar ways. However, if the people commenting are not your target audience, that would be a different issue.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Hierarchy Question
I understand the basic concept of page hierarchy, i.e. parent and child pages. My question is: Should the home page be the parent of all 2nd-level pages? Can/should there only be one top-level page, the home page? In other words, is this: site.com/homesite.com/home/products site.com/home/products/widgetsite.com/home/aboutsite.com/home/contactbetter than this:site.com/homesite.com/products site.com/products/widgetsite.com/aboutsite.com/contactThanks for your opinion!
On-Page Optimization | | BillWoods0 -
New Page Not ranking?
One of this client's top keyword is "oak beams". They already rank well in the UK for other related terms like "reclaimed oak beams" at /reclaimed-oak-beams/ and "air dried oak beams" at /air-dried-oak-beams/ We have created a page at /oak-beams/ but this page ranks nowhere? Instead the reclaimed oak beams or air dried oak beams page ranks for the term "oak beams". Any ideas why Google is swapping between those pages and not choosing the /oak-beams/ page? A few notes are that the /oak-beams/ page is newest page on the site and yes I know there are no links pointing to it but there are no links pointing to the other pages either?
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today0 -
Contact pages coming up for keywords above landing pages
I have two examples of contact pages coming up over designated landing pages Keyword: Nickel Alloys for www.neonickel.com Keyword: Artificial Grass for www.artificialgrass4u.co.uk Is there anyway I can stop this happening?
On-Page Optimization | | icansee0 -
On Page reports is empty
Hello, Yesterday I created my PRO account, I have several urls in top 50 instead of a have no report in On Page Reports, how low take the system for generating this? Thank you, Carlos
On-Page Optimization | | cahams0 -
"City page" links in footer of home page: Spammy?
Is listing a bunch of links to city pages in the footer of a home page considered "spammy" to Google? (ie- Chicago Alarms, Illinois Alarms, Naperville Alarms, etc.) What are the negative affects this might have on ranking, if any?
On-Page Optimization | | MChi0 -
Can you have more than 1 site on the first page if site look and content is completely different but keywords are the sam.
I have a client that wants to build another completely different site than his main site and optimize it to have 2 websites on the first page for his keywords. The content and look and feel of the website would be completely different. One of his competitors is doing it and getting away with it. What is your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | Roots70 -
Multiple silos/products/landing pages. How to design the root page for conversion?
Hi everyone, First post. Tried a few awkward searches on the topic but I must be using bad keywords. I'm re-designing a site that has multiple products and matching multiple audiences. This means we have multiple sillos for multiple groups of keywords with the supporting pages for each silo landing page. Currently I'm working on updating the look and text of those landing pages for each silo to increase conversion. This leaves me with the root web page. We get quite a lot of search traffic from people searching our brand name - so this results in clicks straight through to our root domain. There are no product specific landing pages because it could be any one of the 3-5 different personas we have hitting the site from that source. Does anyone have any good examples of where a site has had multiple products and needed to segregate their audience on a root top page? I'd like to see some examples and hear peoples thoughts. At the moment I'm thinking I need to fill that page up with trust factors as to why people should use us as a company, along with navigational elements in relation to each and every product so they can click through to the proper landing page. The main way I can see on executing that is to have a rotating banner with the same tag line "this is what we do" but be alternating between banners relating to each product.. with their own click through button to go to the respective landing page. Thoughts anyone? Example of sites doing this well?
On-Page Optimization | | specific0 -
Framed Pages and Dynamic Pages
Has anyone else had experience with different CMS's for Ecommerce . Ones that create static pages and others that dynamically create pages. What differences have you seen with rankings on google with the two. Here are two examples of sites using static framed pages and one with a system that dynamically creates pages - http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ - static frames and http://www.floraselect.co.uk - dynamically
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0