
Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that having a thriving community helps with rankings. He said "a healthy, thriving community on a site, that can help a lot" when it comes to Google rankings.
Here is the set of tweets in context:
@jenstar yep. In general if we see that there's a healthy, thriving community on a site, that can help a lot
— Gary Illyes (@methode) April 27, 2016
So all of you who comment here, thank you. No, the image above is me not calling you trolls - or is it? :-P
How important are the comments on your site and the community on your site relative to links or content? Not as important at all. Gary laid it out:
@jenstar it feeds into general quality. Say, there's good content, 5 points, great links from great pages, 2 points, thriving community, 1pt
— Gary Illyes (@methode) April 27, 2016
But still, having an active comments and community helps. I wonder what Gary means by "healthy"?
As you know, comments can also leads to issues for sites.
Forum discussion at Twitter.





Comments:
Tadeusz Szewczyk (Tad Chef)
04/27/2016 12:28 pm
Yeah, so for years Google has been scaring people not to use comments on their blogs. Now that many blogs have shut off comments altogether or outsource them to Facebook, Disqus etc. they need to backtrack again. Google has a very negative impact on the publishing practice over all. Ideally you don't listen to their "advice" in the first place. This is just another issue like the fear of linking out or using nofollow on all links. Don't get scared into submission by Google! ALL links are unnatural, the Internet does not grow on trees.
Emory Rowland
04/27/2016 12:45 pm
Get ready for scammers to start selling the SEO community package for $99/mo.
Anon User
04/27/2016 12:50 pm
I got mine for $95/MO.
The Truth
04/27/2016 12:54 pm
It hasn't helped this website, in fact it may have hurt it... New product, Negative SEO community package for $79/mo
Anon User
04/27/2016 01:03 pm
Damn, now I feel cheated.
Vanessa Pino
04/27/2016 02:09 pm
Makes sense. In my experience I've seen the best pages ranked higher with comments and my thought was always due to users staying longer on the page (lower bounce rate) to read through and/or possibly contribute to an article.
Joe "Master" Phero
04/27/2016 02:19 pm
LOL, while reading the article I started wondering how much idiots are going to start charging in the near future for bogus blog comments too
FNadmin
04/27/2016 02:48 pm
I'm off to setup a hundred chat alts and chat to myself all day on my website. Number one spot here I come.
Peter Parker
04/27/2016 04:57 pm
And this is why Google is so reluctant to tell us anything... Have fun.
Rahul Rockx
04/28/2016 05:59 am
Though, you can't say for sure coz the page ranking on first will get more comments(that's quite obvious).
Ashish Ahuja
04/28/2016 12:26 pm
it confirms what I have said long ago, that activity is a major factor in google rankings
Ben Guest
04/28/2016 02:08 pm
Proxy server with multiple identities here we come!!! Which is why Google is becoming more hush-hush about their algo. It's simply too easy to manipulate especially when you have sites you really don't care about to hammer away at that algo. Real-time and A.I. is the only thing that can save it now.
RyanMJones
05/06/2016 02:50 pm
can't wait to see how SEOs misinterpret his comment about "points"
RyanMJones
05/06/2016 02:50 pm
Google doesn't know your bounce rate. Most sites on the web don't use GA.
Bijutoha
11/16/2017 07:53 am
I just think about dwell time on 2018 SEO fact, because of the rank brain. Need to encourage comments on my site, it will make the best value on RB.
Mohammad Victory
11/18/2018 05:14 am
In that situation, we can have a page with lots of external no-follow links. Isn't it bad?
Riyyan seo
11/30/2018 07:11 pm
In that SEO,