Does Commenting on Other YouTube Videos Help Your Channel?
Yes, commenting on YouTube videos does help, when the comment is useful to the people watching. A helpful comment gets read, and your name on it links to your channel. Links and plugs get held for review or removed before anyone sees them. Check yours:
What the checker found
Risks0 found
Helpful signals3 of 4
The short answer
Yes, if the comment is useful to the people watching that video. Viewers read comments while a video plays, and your channel name on a comment is a link. Comments that add a timestamp, a missing step or a real question earn taps. Links, self-promotion and repeated text get held for review or removed instead.
It is not an algorithm trick. It is discovery: your name in front of people already watching your niche, at the moment they are paying attention. The viewers who tap through are the same people who would watch your videos, because they are watching a video like yours right now.
Whether it works comes down to one thing you control: what you post. YouTube ranks comments by what viewers are likely to value, holds self-promotion for review by default, and removes repeated comments and link drops as spam. A specific, helpful comment avoids every one of those filters, sits near the top of the comment section and gives people a reason to find out who wrote it. The checker above shows which side of that line your draft is on.
Does commenting help the YouTube algorithm?
Not in any documented way. No YouTube source says comments you leave on other channels change how your own videos are recommended. What a comment does is send interested viewers straight to your channel, and the views and subscriptions they give you count like any others. Treat commenting as a traffic source, not a ranking lever.
The official material points the other way: recommendations follow viewers and channel quality, not your activity under other people’s videos. YouTube’s own explainer on recommendations says:
And just like on Search, we also consider the reputation and the quality of a channel to determine how, when, and to whom the content can be surfaced to
And YouTube’s Creator Liaison, Rene Ritchie, put it more bluntly on the Think Media Podcast:
Try not to think about the algorithm too much, because the algorithm’s job is to follow the audience
So a comment helps your channel the plain way: a viewer reads it, taps your name, watches a video and maybe subscribes. Those viewers then behave like any other audience, and that behaviour is what the algorithm follows. Commenting on YouTube videos to get subscribers works on exactly that path, one viewer at a time, and only when the comment is worth reading.
Comments on your own videos are a different question. Replying to the people who comment on your channel keeps the conversation going and gives them a reason to come back. YouTube even encourages creators to ask for that engagement: its spam policy says It's okay to ask viewers to like, comment, or subscribe.
(spam policy).
What YouTube’s own policies say
YouTube never says “do not comment on other videos”. It says what makes a comment spam, and what a channel’s settings hold back. Every quote below is from YouTube Help, word for word, linked to the page it comes from.
Comment spam: Using high-volume, repetitive, or deceptive comments, live chats, or other messages to drive traffic to or engagement with content.
Posting identical or similar “check out my channel” messages across hundreds of videos.
Offering to subscribe to another creator’s channel only if they subscribe to your channel (“sub4sub”)
YouTube doesn’t allow anything that artificially increases the number of views, likes, comments, or other metrics either by using automatic systems or serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers.
Selecting Basic comment moderation will hold comments in YouTube Studio that may be spam, self-promotion, gibberish, or potentially inappropriate.
You can hold comments that contain URLs for review.
Read together, the rules describe one pattern: the same promotional message, pasted at volume, often with a link or a follow-back offer. Everything in the checker’s Risks column comes from that pattern. Nothing in these pages restricts a viewer from leaving a thoughtful comment on a video in their own niche, and that is the whole of comment marketing done well.
Who actually sees your comment?
Only viewers who scroll to it in the view they use. Most read Top comments, which YouTube ranks by what viewers are likely to value. A comment can also be held for the creator’s approval or removed as spam, and then nobody sees it. A useful comment with no link or plug avoids both and has a chance to rank.
Top comments or Newest first
Under every video there are two views. Top comments is the default and the one most people read. YouTube explains how it is ordered:
The Top comments view shows what viewers are likely to value and interact with based on various signals, such as the comment text, handle text, channel name text, avatar, viewer, and video.
That list of signals is worth reading twice. Your comment text counts, and so do your handle, your channel name and your avatar. A channel name that reads like a real creator in the niche, and a comment that says something specific, both help. YouTube also says Both Top comments and Members comments view may not show content that YouTube detects viewers are not likely to value or interact with.
Newest first is plain time order, which is why commenting early on a fresh video matters: an early, useful comment has time to collect likes and replies before the section fills up.
Held for review
A held comment is invisible to viewers until the creator approves it. This is not rare or exotic:
A channel can hold all comments or potentially inappropriate comments for review. When a channel holds comments for review, a channel owner or moderator has to approve a comment before it’s published.
Potentially inappropriate comments are automatically held for channels to review as the default setting.
A held comment waits in the creator’s Held tab, Kept in YouTube Studio for up to 60 days.
Unless someone on the channel approves it in that window, viewers never see it. One commenter under a video about commenting mistakes put it from experience:
Another tip is to avoid trying to post links or even hashtags in the comments. Sometimes your comment won't even make because it could be held for review.
Removed as spam
Some comments never reach the Held tab. YouTube removes likely spam automatically, and it lists exactly what it looks for:
Posting large volumes of comments in a short amount of time, repeatedly posting the same comment, sharing links, or excessively using emoji or unusual characters may be detected as spam and removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines
Volume, repetition, links and emoji runs: four of the risks the checker flags. Pace is the one it cannot see, so the playbook below covers it.
How to check that your comment shows
YouTube gives a two-step test. First: If you can’t find your comment in Top comments, sort the comments by “Newest first.”
Then: If your comment doesn’t show in Newest first view, it may have been moderated by the channel or removed for a policy violation.
Open the video in a private window when you check, so you see what a stranger sees rather than your own signed-in view.
Does commenting on YouTube videos get you subscribers?
Sometimes, and it depends on the comment. Creators who report subscribers from commenting describe specific, knowledgeable comments on videos in their own niche. Creators who saw nothing describe one-off comments on huge videos or generic praise. The comment has to be worth reading before anyone taps the name on it.
The creators who tried it split along one line: what they posted. The ones it worked for left comments people valued. The ones it failed for left comments nobody needed, or wrote under videos whose viewers were never going to watch their channel. These are their words, from the forum threads that still rank for this question.
It helped
I have even had people say they always see me in the comment sections and decided to check me out!
Yeah it works, but the results can really depend on the niche. I wouldn't expect much in the entertainment niche, but if you leave a knowledgeable comment on videos that provide information, it can cause people to check out your channel.
commenting on videos, regardless of the outcome, does put your channel out there. The more people see it, the more people will recognize you.
It did not
I don't know that I've ever gotten any kind of a viewer spike by commenting on the videos of others, certainly I've never had a big channel decide to subscribe to my channel or take a look at my videos that I know of.
I commented on a PewDiePie video. He hearted the comment (which is something he rarely ever does, and I legit went into fanboy mode when I got that notification on my phone. LOL), and it goes a ton of likes, naturally. Believe it or not.. I didn't gain any subs from that.
certain comments will get called spam, I've even had people complaining about me leaving comments that simply say "Hey, great video!"
Notice what the second column has in common. A hearted comment on one of the biggest channels on YouTube brought likes and no subscribers, because those viewers came for that creator, not for a niche. Generic praise got called spam. The first column is about showing up repeatedly, with knowledge, in the places your future viewers already watch.
How a comment turns into a visit
Four steps, and each one can fail. The comment has to be read, has to be worth a tap, and your channel page has to be worth staying on.
Step two is where most comments fail, through the filters above or because they are buried. Step three fails on generic praise: nobody taps a name to see who wrote “great video”. Step four fails when the channel behind the name has nothing on the topic the viewer just watched. On a phone, a tap on the profile picture opens a profile card first, with the channel’s name, picture and handle, and the channel is one more tap away. Either way, the name and avatar are what the viewer judges before deciding.
When does commenting not help your channel?
When the viewers reading the comment would never watch your videos, when your channel has little to land on, or when the comment is generic or promotional. It also fails as a replacement for making videos. Commenting multiplies a channel that already has something worth watching; it cannot stand in for one.
- Huge channels and entertainment niches. On a video with tens of thousands of comments, yours is buried within minutes, and fans of a personality are there for that person. Pick mid-sized videos in a topic niche, where viewers are looking for more on the subject.
- A thin channel behind the name. The tap lands on your channel page. If the newest video is unrelated, or there are only two uploads, the visitor leaves.
- Generic or copy-paste comments. They earn no taps, and repeated text is one of the patterns YouTube removes automatically.
- Comments with links or plugs. They wait in Held, which on a busy channel means nobody reads them.
- Hours of commenting instead of uploads. A comment points viewers somewhere. Make sure there is somewhere worth pointing.
if your comment is ranked high in the popular videos, people will engage with you in those comments, but the sad point is they don't bother checking out others content.
If someone visits your channel and finds little content, the opportunity is often wasted.
When you're at twenty subs, doing the hard work is better than easy "marketing" through commenting.
The playbook: commenting that gets read
Seven steps, in order. The first three happen before you type anything.
- 1
Pick videos your viewers would also watch
Same niche, published in the last day or two, from channels a little bigger than yours. Fresh comment sections get read; week-old ones are buried under hundreds of replies.
- 2
Watch it, or read the transcript
You cannot add to a video you have not seen. Note one moment worth pointing at, with its timestamp, before you write a word.
- 3
Read the top comments first
If the top comment already makes your point, do not post it again. Answer someone’s question in the replies instead.
- 4
Add one thing the video did not
Chapters, a missing step, a short summary, a real question or a specific insight. One of them, not all five.
- 5
No links, no plugs
Your channel name is the link. A URL or "check out my channel" is what gets a comment held or removed.
- 6
Keep a human pace
A few comments a day, spaced out, never two on one video and not the same creator every day. Write each one fresh: YouTube’s spam policy names identical messages across many videos.
- 7
Check that it shows
Open the video in a private window and sort by Newest first. If your comment is missing there, it was held or removed: run it through the checker above.
Comment templates you can adapt
Each one adds a single thing to the video. Fill the brackets from the video itself, then load it into the checker to see how it reads. Never post a template with its brackets still in it, and never post the same filled-in version twice.
Chapters
A missing step
A short summary
A real question
A specific insight
Videos on both sides of the question
Two takes from a channel-growth creator, one for and one against, and YouTube’s own video on how creators handle the comments they receive.
Questions
Is it a good idea to comment on YouTube videos?
Yes, when each comment adds something to the video it sits under. A timestamp, a missing step or a real question gets read, and your channel name on it is a link to your channel. Pasting the same plug under many videos is the opposite: YouTube’s spam policy names identical “check out my channel” messages as comment spam.
Does commenting on a YouTube video help the creator?
Yes. A comment is engagement on their video, and YouTube says it is okay for creators to ask viewers to like, comment or subscribe. A useful comment also makes the comment section better for the next viewer, because the Top comments view surfaces what viewers are likely to value. Creators notice the commenters who add something.
Do YouTubers get paid if you comment?
No. YouTube does not pay creators per comment, so a comment is never income for them on its own. What a comment gives a creator is engagement and a livelier comment section, which is why so many of them ask for comments at the end of a video. For you, the comment is a way to be seen by their audience.
Does replying to comments help?
Yes, for the conversation. YouTube Help puts it simply: “YouTube comments are public and anyone can reply to a comment that you post.” A reply that answers someone’s question is often the most useful line in the thread. On your own videos, replying keeps viewers talking and coming back. On other channels, a good reply puts your name under a comment people are already reading.
Do comments help the YouTube algorithm?
There is no public evidence that comments you leave on other channels change how your own videos are recommended. YouTube says it weighs the reputation and quality of a channel, and its Creator Liaison says the algorithm follows the audience. Comments elsewhere send viewers to you directly. Treat them as discovery, not as an algorithm lever.
How many comments a day is too many?
YouTube does not publish a number. Its removal rule is about posting large volumes of comments in a short amount of time and repeating the same comment. Keep to a few specific comments a day, spaced hours apart, never two on the same video and not the same creator every day. Each one should be written for its video.
Why did my comment disappear after I posted it?
It was most likely held for review. Holding potentially inappropriate comments is the default on every channel, and creators can also hold comments that contain links. A held comment shows only if the channel approves it. If it is missing from Newest first as well, it was moderated by the channel or removed for a policy violation.
Can commenting get my channel in trouble?
Ordinary comments, no. YouTube’s spam policy targets high-volume, repetitive or deceptive comments, and its fake engagement policy names sub4sub offers. Those patterns get comments removed and channels actioned. One specific comment on a video in your niche, written for that video, is the kind of engagement both policies leave alone.
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