Does a broken link in a commented out section of an email affect deliverability?

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that it's best to picture yourself as the writer of the filter. Filter writers need to evaluate all the links in an email to determine if any of them have a bad associated reputation. They will likely use a plaintext tool that extracts every URL from the message, regardless of where it appears in the message or whether it would actually render to the user, something much lighter from a resource perspective. What they do with those URLs is a different matter, like Laura said some URLs will be common to most email messages and will likely get flagged to be ignored because they are too common to be used for reputation purposes, but they will no doubt grab all the URLs.

Email marketer from Shopify explains that a good user experience is good for SEO. They suggest that any broken link will impact user experience, so fix them.

Email marketer from Search Engine Journal explains that how search engine crawlers interact with your site is important. Broken links, even if commented out, *could* potentially be crawled, wasting crawl budget and signaling a less-than-ideal site structure. The actual impact depends on how the search engine handles commented-out code.

Email marketer from Moz Blog shares that internal linking is important for SEO. While it discusses internal links, the same principles apply: broken internal links hurt user experience and crawlability. Fixing them is part of good site maintenance.

Email marketer from Digital Marketing Institute explains that User experience is a ranking factor. Broken links contribute to a poor user experience and can therefore indirectly hurt SEO. Focus on providing users with valuable, working content and links.

Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that broken links negatively impact SEO by causing a poor user experience. Search engines prioritize websites that offer a seamless and valuable experience. Broken links lead to frustration, higher bounce rates, and decreased time on site, all of which signal to search engines that the website may not be a high-quality resource. Fixing broken links improves site quality and can boost search engine rankings.

Email marketer from Backlinko explains that website maintenance is an important SEO aspect. While it discusses website maintenance more broadly, checking and fixing broken links is mentioned as a key part of maintaining a healthy site.

Email marketer from Reddit shares that while broken links alone aren't likely to trigger a massive penalty, a large number of them can contribute to a negative perception of your site's quality by search engines. It's one factor among many, but still worth addressing. The overall quality of a site is impacted by many aspects.

Email marketer from StackOverflow shares that HTML comments are ignored by the browser during rendering. However, search engine crawlers *can* still see and process content within comments. Whether a broken link in a comment affects SEO depends on how thoroughly search engines parse and weigh commented-out content.

Email marketer from Ahrefs Blog explains that finding and fixing broken links is crucial for SEO. They suggest using tools like Ahrefs Site Audit to identify broken links on your website. Broken links can lead to a poor user experience, dilute link equity, and prevent search engines from properly crawling your site. Repairing these links can improve your website's SEO performance.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that common deliverability issues arise from list quality, authentication and reputation. A broken URL can cause issues as it will not be seen as a good link to be pointing to.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that most people and tools will point out broken links can harm delivery, but the real proof is in underlying delivery. The only way to tell if it's going to make a difference in a real world environment is to send mail in a real world environment. It might affect deliverability, especially during warmup, but it also might not. Filtering is complex. Very occasionally she has seen reputation engines go a bit bonkers and block mail with <http://fonts.googleapis.com|fonts.googleapis.com>. It affects a lot of wanted mail, so it generally resolves pretty quickly.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that a broken link in a comment probably has a similar impact to the same link not in a comment. If the link, or the hostname in it, correlates with unwanted mail, that’s bad. Also, most templating languages include comment syntax. If you use that, rather than `<!-- -->` then your commented out content never hits the wire. If a mailbox provider keys on those commented out URLs (which they may or may not) then you’ll be sharing a bit of reputation with all those other users of the template.

Expert from Spam Resource explains that deliverability is about building reputation and trust over time. Having good URLs is a small part of that, but broken links can undermine that if it suggests the links were added maliciously.

Documentation from W3C explains that HTML comments `<!-- ... -->` are not rendered by the browser. While not directly addressing deliverability, this suggests that commented-out code *shouldn't* directly affect how mail servers interpret the active content. But if a crawler is looking at the raw HTML then it will see the links. This can be different to rendering

Documentation from IETF explains the proper formatting and structure of URLs. While not directly addressing commented-out links, adhering to URL standards can help prevent broken links in the first place. Ensuring valid URL syntax is crucial for proper rendering and crawlability.

Documentation from Google Search Central shares that while this page focuses on website links, broken links anywhere are bad. It is recommended you regularly check your site for broken links and fix them. Broken links can frustrate users and make it harder for search engines to crawl your site.

Documentation from Schema.org describes the importance of schema markup for search engines. While not directly discussing commented-out links, schema markup within comments could be misinterpreted if not implemented correctly, potentially leading to errors that affect indexing. The recommendation is to implement it correctly.