The real secret why we separated WordPress comments from post content, is to deal with our Google penalties. While our site gets millions of spam comments every year, many comments slip through the spam filters and moderation efforts. The more I analyze our content to fix the Google penalties, the more I realize that hundreds of these poor WordPress comments are an important cause affecting several of these pages.
While I told you how to open WordPress pop-up comments, it turns out that showing WordPress comments on new pages is even better in a lot of different ways. Here is how hosting WordPress comments on new pages can help you fight Google penalties.
Separate user-generated content
WordPress comments are generated by website readers, and more commonly spam bots which managed to escape your comment moderators and antispam plug-ins.
WordPress comments can be bad for several reasons in the tracks of Google Panda.
- Spammy URL linked to comment name or in the comment text
- Poor grammar in comment name or in the comment text
- Bad keywords in comment name or comment text
A lot of rubbish poorly moderated comments can red flag Google algorithms, label these as poorly moderated thin content pages – and is a very common reason to get a Google Panda penalty. Separating these WordPress comments into new pages helps us keep WordPress comments out of the Google index.
No-Index comments pages
Now you can no index the new comments-popup.php pages by adding meta tags, and this will prevent the WordPress comments page from getting indexed into the Google index. Since the code of these pages is totally under your control, simply add the following line of code after the HEAD tags of your new comments-popup.php file
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
This will prevent Google from indexing your comment pages completely. Remember NOT to put the tags on your main post pages or header.php template or they will be no indexed also.
No follow comments link
You can also add rel="nofollow" tags to the links from your post pages (single.php) which point to these comment pages. This will prevent Google from visiting the comment pages.
<a href="http://yourdomain.com/?comments_popup=<?php the_ID(); ?>"
rel="nofollow" class="btn">
<?php comments_number('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></a>So while you maintain an effective comment system, supported with all your spam comment blocking plug-ins, yet the comment system is separated from your main posts. So while users continue to enjoy your post content, they can continue to click to the comments page to read other comments or post a comment easily – and you can keep user based content separate and safe from Google Panda penalties.