plunge in views caused by comments?

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   letstalkabouteducposted 4 years ago

   I recently had an article take a dramatic plunge in views and am trying to figure out why. I had approved a couple very long comments that included misspellings and punctuation errors (now that the Q & A is gone I'm getting some lengthy comments)! Can these comments lead to a plunge? I've since deleted them but would like to know. Thanks!

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      Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      If a comment contain errors posted on my articles, I deleted them.

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         letstalkabouteducposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Miebakagh. I'll do the same. I've learned my lesson!

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            Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

            You're welcome.

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      lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      The thing with On-Page SEO is that you can test stuff. Instead of deleting those comments you would have unpublished them and seen if it affected your traffic after a month or once the new changes have been indexed.
      
      Deleting comments with errors certainly would help, but a sudden drastic drop, is unlikely, though possible.

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         letstalkabouteducposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Brandon. I thought that the plunge was due to the comments because it happened right after I approved them. If that wasn't the case, what could account for such a dramatic drop?

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            lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            As I said, it's very unlikely that it was the case, so you will have to test. How long is your article and how unrelated was the comment? If it was just bad spelling and punctuation it most likely is not the culprit unless that forms a major portion of the article. I would not leave it on anyway, but there are plenty of reasons for a sudden drop, it's usually an algorithm update or a change in headings, etc.

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   Glenn Stokposted 4 years ago

   Misspellings and other errors can definitely affect your SEO ranking. Google treats comments as part of the content.
   
   Several years ago I cleaned up my comments across many of my articles, removing comments with poor grammar, misspellings, useless (such as “nice hub”), and those that were off topic (not related to the subject).
   
   I monitored the results. It took time, but eventually those hubs had improved traffic.

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      Jeremy Gillposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Many of my articles are geared towards gaming (both electronic and card games), hobbies which often appeal to younger folks, and I believe youth have a tendency to use slang or incorrect grammar when commenting. This leads to rejecting several comments that would be fine if the grammar was better; any advice? Thanks!

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         Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

         This is something that beats my mind. If the speakers and writers of convention English can make vital mistakes, slang spearkers cannot be an exception. But a slang can be in tanden with the content of the article. It would be hard to judge this at times. But I believe standard english is the best tool or yardstick.

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         lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         If it is commonly accepted slang and not SMS language, go ahead and approve the comments. Otherwise do what you are doing.

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            Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Lobo, your point of view is balanced.

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         Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Hi Jeremy, The best advice I can give you in that case is to do what I do. I feel bad when someone who can't write a decent English sentence asks for help. I feel they at least deserve an answer.
         
         So I answer them, but I keep a record in my "to-do" list to delete that comment and my reply a few days later. That gives them a chance to see the reply before Google crawls the page again.

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            Jeremy Gillposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks all, I appreciate the input.

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      Abby Slutskyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      That is good to know. Thank you.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Not completely related, but I did not want to create a new post about comments. Do you know if it's possible to reverse an admin denied comment? I was going through and cleaning up some of the comments in my articles and noticed at some point the admin's denied a comment. It's a comment I responded too, so I was wondering if I could reverse their decision or if I should just hide my comment.
      
      I have no idea why it was denied (or when it was, as I approved it so I could respond to them). I'm finding several that were admin approved that are full of misspellings, nonsense, or simply great hub/article, which is still happening currently if I do not get to them fast enough before they get sent to admin so I'm really confused by this denied comment.

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         Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         That’s interesting. I’ve had admin approved comments in the past (over a year ago), but never admin denied. So I don’t know if you can reverse them.
         
         I complained about pre-approving to the team. When they approved comments for me, I ended up not responding to the reader’s questions because they were no longer in my pending list and I didn’t see them.
         
         But your situation is even worse! I can’t imagine why they would approve comments that are low quality — even as bad as nonsense and useless statements such as “nice hub” — which Google responds to badly.
         
         It sounds like they hired someone to approve comments who has no idea what they are doing. That needs to be brought to their attention. I would email the team with details of your comments they approved.
         
         Leave a follow-up here when you get a reply. I’m curious to know what comes of it.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            It is the only one I found in the dozen articles I went through today. I found it odd myself and was wondering if anyone else has come across this. I do not spend a lot of time monitoring comments as I do not get that many, especially on this particular article so it's the first time I noticed it. The comment itself is over 2yrs old. For all I know it was denied shortly after I responded to the comment, I honestly have no idea. I will plan to hide my comment, that seems like the easiest route at this point.
            
            Will they have access to the comments approved if I deleted or denied them already? I guess I will find out. I didn't even think about contacting the team, but I will let you know if anything comes of it!

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            Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            This is from the e-mail I recieved. "We approve comments if they are not spam, inappropriate, or not in English. If the comments are understandable we approve them."
            
            As long as the misspellings do not cause the comment to be completely incomprehendable it seems they will accept them no matter how low quality they are. The comment I shared with him, that I did not completely understand he said seemed okay, despite the errors. I don't completely agree, as I have no idea what the last sentence was asking, but I just denied it anyway and will try to get to them within 7 days from now on.
            
            He also said denied comments can be reversed. Looks like mine was done in error so he reversed it

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               Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               I'm confused. A few days ago, you began by talking about admin denied comments, which I never hear of (unless you were talking about spam). Your last post is about admin approved comments, which I guess is only done if you don't get to it in time.
               
               How are you moderating your comments? I feel seven days is a long time to keep readers waiting. I check mine daily from the global moderation page where we can approve and reply to all comments in all hubs from one place. There's no need to check each hub individually.

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                  Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  I referred to both in my first comment.
                  
                  The denied comment was not spam. It was a comment that I had approved and then replied to. Hp staff said it must have been denied by mistake. Not sure how that would happen if I already approved it. He reversed it so it is now viewable so I guess it doesn't matter.
                  
                  I do not go on HP daily, so unless I get an email (doesn't always happen, no matter how often I check my settings to ensure they are right) I could go up to two or three weeks before checking HP. I didn't know they only waited 7 days before approving comments.
                  
                  Like I said before though I don't get many comments, so it's usually not a big deal. I do use the main moderation page for checking comments, but if I'm not getting emails I guess I could be getting more comments than I realize. I will have to try and check in more often.

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                     Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     It's good you are using the main moderation page. At least you get to see all comments no matter where they are. And you can change the filter to see the spam, low quality, and admin approved comments too.
                     
                     I don't know about that 7-day limit. I was merely assuming that when you said they approved one of your comments when you didn't check for seven days. Maybe I misunderstood you.

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                        Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        The HP staff told me it was 7 days. That is a great feature, and really helps when I'm coming back from being gone for awhile. I have used it occasionally. I wish I would have known that years ago. I found some good comments in my spam section, but feel it has been too long to approve them now.

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                  Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  How about this comments: "The photo I am seeing is not your pieture." or "Corvid-19 disease has less merit, if all covid-19 infections were compared in two countries." Do you think these minor mispellings is approved or approvable?

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                     Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     One or two minor typos like those do not deter from the meaning of the comment. They could be approved, in my opinion.

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                        Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        Thanks for the clarification. All the same, it makes sense to me, to cross check my posts, comments, and articles before submitting same. Much thanks again.

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                           Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                           It's good you are doing that.

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                              Miebakagh57posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                              You're always welcomed.

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   letstalkabouteducposted 4 years ago

   Thanks so much, Glenn. This is definitely good to know. The comments were interesting so I approved them but then the drop happened. Unfortunately, I rarely get comments with no errors. I think that I'll do some tidying up like you did!

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