This factor counts how many times your target keyword’s variations appear inside HTML comments — the developer notes in your markup that browsers hide from visitors. It is an observational count, not a target: comments are not visible page copy, and a low or zero value is perfectly healthy.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-060 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Cleaned HTML comment contents |
What it measures
This factor counts keyword variations that appear inside HTML comments — the text wrapped in <!-- ... --> tags that renders in your source but never on the page. It reports a single number: how many variation matches were found across all comment contents on the page.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear extracts the comment contents from the full HTML with scripts removed, cleans each capture, and sums case-insensitive whole-word variation matches. Matching is whole-word and case-insensitive, so Widget and widget count the same, and a substring inside a longer word is not counted.
What RankGear looks for
<!-- TODO: refresh hero copy for widget review -->
<!-- widgets section: keep above the fold -->How to optimize it
Do not optimize comments for search relevance. Treat this as an observation, not a target. Keep only the developer notes that are genuinely necessary, and remove sensitive or obsolete information from your comments — a build that ships clean markup will often report a low or zero value, and that is the healthy outcome.
Important considerations
- Comments are not visible page copy — readers never see them.
- Templates and build tools can inject repeated comments, inflating the count without any authoring intent.
- The factor does not imply search-engine use of comments; it is a descriptive measurement of your markup.
- A lower or zero value is not a deficiency.
- This is a correlational signal within a measured result set, not a lever that makes a page rank — do not add keywords to comments to move it.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.