YouTube Help Disabling Comments | Good or Bad or Neutral?

[MediaMan]

So I've been working on one of my channels via shorts only. Views and subs are acceptable. I'm about to release some long play videos and I really don't want to turn on comments for these videos. I'm wondering how this will impact my channel and or videos? Google search tells me comments are fairly important for the YT recommendation machine but most of those results were a year or so old. Any comments appreciated, thx.

 

[lonelytalks]

I would recommend not to turn off the comment. User engagement is calculated using the comments most of the time so it may hurt your SEO. It doesn't matter whether the comments are positive or negative, every comments help increase your user engagement and thus in long run it helps your channel a lot more than you think. All the information I provided here are based on my personal experience. Good luck!

 

[Tito Tim]

Comments help build a viewer community, and YT sees them as engagements. I think long form videos really need comments to help a channel grow & maintain. Shorts have no community, so comments may be less important there.

 

[HealthyTiffany]

Although I understand the reasoning for not wanting comments, I can't tell you in good conscience to disable them; as people above have said, long form videos truly do need comments so YouTube knows that there is engagement. I only see videos with comments disabled being successful if the YouTuber already has an established following. If someone ever leaves a comment that really upsets you, you can always block that person and prevent them from leaving comments on your videos in the future.