For most company blogs, the answer is no: comments on SME blogs rarely bring genuine feedback, but reliably bring spam, moderation work and responsibility for other people's content on your own website. A clearer contact point at the end of each post makes more sense, with discussion happening where it naturally occurs anyway, for example on LinkedIn. Comments are only worthwhile if someone at the business reads, answers and moderates them within a day.
The comment function is switched on by default in most blogging systems. This is a legacy from a time when blogs were personal diaries with regular readers. A company blog that answers customer questions works differently: readers arrive via a search, read the answer and either call or leave. They don't discuss things underneath the post. The decision of whether to allow comments is therefore a question of effort, with a clear leaning.
What comments can offer
Honestly, there are three cases where comments make a company blog better:
- Genuine follow-up questions. A reader asks underneath the post about heat pumps whether this also applies to a two-family house. The answer adds an aspect to the post that other readers are also looking for.
- Expert additions. A colleague from the industry points out a new standard. This makes the post more current.
- Visible response. Twenty substantive comments show readers that the post is being read and taken seriously.
All three cases assume that someone replies. An unanswered question from eight months ago underneath a post signals the opposite of engagement. And all three cases are rare on SME blogs. Anyone who reviews their blog's comments from the past twelve months will typically find a handful of genuine entries and many times more spam.
What comments cost
| Cost factor | What happens | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Spam | Automated comments with links to third-party offers, daily or even hourly | Set up filters, delete the rest manually |
| Moderation | Every comment has to be read, approved or deleted | A few minutes daily, more for larger blogs |
| Responses | Follow-up questions expect an answer within a day | An expert is needed, this can't be delegated |
| Technology | The comment function is a common entry point for attacks and must be kept up to date | Updates, plugins, checks |
| Responsibility | Third-party content appears under your name | Checking every comment for legal violations |
The last point is often underestimated. Anyone who publishes comments on their website is publishing other people's statements under their own domain. If a comment contains an insult, a false factual claim about a competitor, or a link to unlawful content, the operator can be held responsible, at least for removing it. How far this responsibility extends in Switzerland in any given case is a legal question that needs to be assessed by an expert. For practical purposes, this conclusion is enough: comments that no one checks are a risk with no upside.
What Google says about it
Google explicitly names user-generated spam in its spam policies: comments, forum posts and profiles that third parties fill with spam. Google expects operators to prevent or remove such content, and may rank pages with a lot of spam lower. Google also recommends marking links in user-generated content with the rel="ugc" or rel="nofollow" attribute, so that it's clear the website doesn't endorse these links. Most content management systems do this automatically; whether yours does can be checked in a comment's source code.
There's no indication from Google that comments improve rankings.
The alternative: a contact point instead of a comment field
What a company blog wants from comments, namely follow-up questions and contact, can be achieved more directly:
- A contact block at the end of each post. "Have a question about your situation? Get in touch." With a phone number and a short form. This way, follow-up questions reach the person who can answer them, rather than sitting publicly underneath the post.
- Discussion on LinkedIn. Sharing the post there generates responses where people comment anyway. The website stays clean, and the discussion still happens.
- An FAQ section within the post. Follow-up questions received by email or phone are collected and added to the post as questions with answers. This gives you the benefit of comments without their costs, and it helps more with Google and in AI answers than a comment field would.
When comments are still the right choice
There are businesses where the calculation works out differently: consultants and coaches whose blog deliberately sparks debate. Specialist businesses with a community that exchanges ideas, for example in model building or specialist tools. Industries with many follow-up questions, where public answers save dozens of individual emails. In these cases, three conditions apply: someone reads daily, someone replies under their name, and a spam filter with manual approval is active. If one condition is missing, the comment field should be switched off. This decision is one of the fundamental questions that need to be settled before the first post; the overview on this is at Creating a company blog.
Data protection for comments
Anyone who allows comments stores the name, email address and usually the IP address of commenters. These are personal data under the Swiss Data Protection Act. The privacy policy must inform people about this, and when using third-party comment services, disclosure to those providers is an additional factor. What the new Data Protection Act specifically means for blogs, statistics and newsletters is summarised on the Data protection in your company blog page. For your own situation, the same applies here: ask an expert.
What to do with this
Switch off comments if no one in the business handles them daily. Replace the field with a contact block and collect queries for the FAQ section. If you keep comments, decide who reads them, who replies and how spam is filtered, before the first comment arrives.
Frequently asked questions
Do comments help with ranking?
Google has not confirmed comments as a ranking factor. Genuine, substantive comments can add useful follow-up questions to a page, which helps indirectly. Spam comments with links, on the other hand, cause harm: Google explicitly names user-generated spam in its spam policies and expects site owners to prevent or remove it.
Can I allow comments only on certain posts?
Yes, most content management systems allow this per post. That's a good middle ground: comments on posts that are deliberately meant to spark discussion, such as a statement on an industry issue, and none on guide posts, where queries are better handled through a contact form.
What do I do with old comments if I switch off the feature?
Read through them once. Substantive comments with genuine questions can be worked into the post, for example as an FAQ section, and then removed. Delete spam and irrelevant entries. A website with comments switched off and twenty visible spam entries from 2019 looks neglected.
Do I need to inform commenters about data protection?
Anyone who stores comments processes personal data such as name, email address and IP address. The Swiss Data Protection Act requires that data subjects be informed of this, usually in the privacy policy. A specialist should check exactly what details need to be included there and how long data may be stored.