Comment Tags And Keywords

Why do all these high ranking pages have comment tags with keywords in them? <!---like this-->

This is just a comment tag, for the designer to notate to himself or others the use of the page or that section of the page.

Many people used to comment s'pam - or to say, fill those tags with tons of keywords thinking it was an invisible way to get more keywords in the code.

I believe most educated folks to assume what is ignored by the browser is likely just as ignored by the spiders in this case.

I admit I used to add these too, if only to have my pages content differ in yet one more way, but this is not a factor in the ranking.

More likey you see this at the top because the pages are well designed, and a good designer takes the time to notate his code.

In short will packing keywords in the comment tags help you? it would be a waste of your time and make you look foolish to those smart enough to examine your code.

If you feel a need to put relevent material in your code, simple make mouseover tooltips to hide your text till its needed or till activated by the cursor, or use the alt tags to better describe your page in an invisible way. An Alt tag is like anchor text for reader programs and is likely vied that way in weighting and ranking.