Dispelling the Myth of Using Comment Tags in SEO - So Why Do People Use Comment Tags for SEO?
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This is an oft-asked question, but one which receives few answers. For one thing, there is no concrete way to know whether comment tags are effective or not, short of phoning the search engines and asking them directly. Obviously they would not be inclined to answer. At one time, in the latter part of the 90's, comment tags were mildly effective in the use of the search engine optimization. During that period standards for markup language were constantly changing, and webmasters figured using this type of markup would help with search engine optimization. It was another way to include precious keywords somewhere else on the page. Why not' After all, they are invisible to the end user and are seen only in the code and by the search engines themselves. This is were the comment tag myth might have developed. Some webmasters found the use of comment tags effective, and continual use of them resulted in increased rankings for some. Nevertheless, those webmasters eventually also found pages ranked just as well without the tags. In other words, results may vary.
This day and age, it is considered to be an error in judgment to use information that is over 5 years old. Likewise, you would not take an internet marketing class with a textbook that old. It's in the history books! The same applies for comment tags; they are part of SEO history.
While there are many reasons why comment tags are not effective, there are some key things to note about comment tags in the context of search engines. Occasionally, comment tags will be indexed and factored into ranking. However, this is usually the result of use, in addition to what they were intended for. Search engines will spider and include the code of a website, including comment tags; it's a part of their job. That, however, doesn't mean that if a search engine indexes a page it automatically factors into ranking everything on the page. In fact, it's poor logic to assume so.
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