Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that having a thriving community helps with rankings. He said “a healthy, thriving community on a site, that can help a lot” when it comes to Google rankings.

Here is the set of tweets in context:

So all of you who comment here, thank you. No, the image above is me not calling you trolls – or is it? 😛

How important are the comments on your site and the community on your site relative to links or content? Not as important at all. Gary laid it out:

But still, having an active comments and community helps. I wonder what Gary means by “healthy”?

As you know, comments can also leads to issues for sites.

Forum discussion at Twitter.