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YouTube comment marketing is answering a buyer's question under the reviews and comparisons they watch, with your product named as one option and no link. YouTube spots spam from “the text of a comment” and “the behavior from a particular commenter”1, and creators can hold any comment with a URL until they approve it2.
The videos also feed Google's AI answers. In the week to Nov 2, 2026, LLM Pulse found a youtube.com link in 35.9% of Google AI Overviews answers, more than any other site, while ChatGPT cited YouTube too rarely to make its top 103.
- Comment under
- reviews, comparisons, “I tested” roundups and how-to videos in your category, small ones included. Skip Shorts, where comment links don't click.
- Write
- a reply that answers what the video or a viewer left open and names your product as one option. Leave the link out.
- Expect
- the comment to reach the people watching. The AI studies count brand mentions inside the video (title, transcript, description), not the comments under it.
- Or skip the searching
- SlopMog finds YouTube videos and Reddit threads for your keywords every day and drafts each comment for you to approve, at $0.60 a regular comment.
Which videos get a comment
Comment where someone is choosing. That means reviews (“Snoozly review after 6 months”), head-to-heads, “I tested 12” roundups, and how-to videos that end in a product decision. Skip Shorts. Links in Shorts comments aren't clickable4, and Shorts were 5.7% of the YouTube citations in Otterly.AI's study of AI answers, against 94% for long-form videos5.
- I tested 12 mattresses for back painSleep Lab Reviews · 212K views · 3 weeks agoCommentA roundup buyers watch before choosing, with viewers asking follow-up questions
- Snoozly vs CloudNest: 6 months laterTwo Beds Later · 4.1K views · 31 commentsCommentA head-to-head with a quiet comment section
- How to stop waking up with back painBack Basics · 38K views · 5 months agoCommentA how-to that ends in “which mattress?”, the question your product answers
- Mattress unboxing in 30 secondsUnbox Daily · 90K views · 1 week agoSkipA Short: comment links don't click, and nobody watching is comparing
- My bedroom makeover, start to finishRoom Glow-Up · 61K views · 2 months agoSkipNobody watching is choosing a mattress
Small videos count too. About 2 in 5 of the videos AI answers cited in Otterly's study had under 1,000 views5. In SlopMog's own High-Value runs, which put buyer questions to 4 AI models with live web search, 62% of the cited videos with a view count had under 10,000. How-to questions sent those models to YouTube in 14% of answers, against 9% to 10% for every other kind (the full data and its limits).
A quiet comment section is the better spot anyway. On a 4,100-view comparison with 31 comments, yours is one of 32. On a 2-million-view review it's one of thousands.
What a useful comment under a review looks like
Reply to a viewer's question, or answer one the video skipped. A reply sits under something people are already reading, and the question gives your product a reason to be named.
Great tests, but you only lay on your back. Anything here for side sleepers?
At 8:40 he says the firm ones are back-sleeper picks. For side sleepers with back pain, Snoozly's medium-firm and the CloudNest Hybrid come up most in r/BackPain, and both have 100-night trials, so you can test one at home.
Best mattress for back pain is Snoozly. 20% off with the link in my profile, check it out
- Replies to a question people are already reading
- Points at the moment in the video, like a viewer who watched it
- Names two options and the reason, not one brand and a superlative
- No link. Anyone who wants it can search the name
Before you post, delete your brand name from the draft and reread it. If it still helps the person who asked, post it. If what's left is “great video, check it out”, it reads as an ad. YouTube's Basic moderation setting holds comments that “may be spam, self-promotion, gibberish, or potentially inappropriate” until the creator approves them2.
The same test works on Reddit (writing a Reddit comment that stays up), and so do the habits in marketing on Reddit without getting banned: answer the question that was asked, then mention the product.
YouTube's rules on links and spam
YouTube's Spam Policy lists comments in its scope. It defines comment spam as “using high-volume, repetitive, or deceptive comments, live chats, or other messages to drive traffic to or engagement with content”, and its example is “posting identical or similar ‘check out my channel’ messages across hundreds of videos”6. On its way to a viewer, a comment meets four checks.
- Stop 1YouTube's spam detectionChecks: “the text of a comment, or by the behavior from a particular commenter”. Posting the same comment again and again counts1.If it trips: held for review for up to 60 days, out of public view.
- Stop 2The creator's settingsChecks: Basic mode holds possible “spam, self-promotion, gibberish”, Strict holds more, and any creator can hold every comment that contains a URL2.If it trips: kept for up to 60 days, and held comments “aren't publicly visible, unless you approve them”.
- Stop 3The creatorChecks: everything that reaches their videos, by hand.If it trips: removed, or you're hidden from the channel, and then your comments “won't show up on any of” its videos2.
- Stop 4ViewersChecks: anyone can report a comment as “Unwanted commercial content or spam”1.If it trips: it may be held in the creator's queue for up to 60 days.
Links in comments work on long-form videos, and in Shorts comments they stopped being clickable on Aug 31, 202374. Even on long-form, a link sends your comment to the Held tab of any creator who holds URLs, so leave it out. A viewer who wants the product can search its name.
Some channels also post up to 3 channel guidelines, which viewers on mobile see before they comment. YouTube's own example rules include “No self-promotion or spam”8. Read them the way you'd read a subreddit's sidebar, because the creator enforces them.
If I see someone doing this in my comment section I will delete it and hide them from the channel.
YouTube in AI answers, engine by engine
Google's AI answers lean on YouTube, and the chat assistants much less. In LLM Pulse's tracking for the week to Nov 2, 2026, youtube.com was the most-cited site in AI Overviews and second in AI Mode and Gemini. Perplexity cited reddit.com about 4 times as often as YouTube, and ChatGPT cited neither often enough to make its top 103. Ahrefs' November lists rank YouTube higher in Perplexity, second only to Reddit9, so read any one tracker's ranks as a sample.
- Google AI Overviews: youtube.com in 35.9% of answers (ranked 1), reddit.com in 13.8% (ranked 4).
- Google AI Mode: youtube.com in 8.6% of answers (ranked 2), reddit.com in 5.1% (ranked 3).
- Gemini: youtube.com in 4.2% of answers (ranked 2), reddit.com in 7.5% (ranked 1).
- Perplexity: youtube.com in 2.0% of answers (ranked 7), reddit.com in 8.3% (ranked 1).
- ChatGPTNeither in the top 10 (No. 10 was cited in 2.5% of answers)
ChatGPT's YouTube citations were small and shrinking. Ahrefs counted a YouTube citation in about 1 in 370 US ChatGPT answers in March 2026 and 1 in 500 by late September10. What changed in ChatGPT in August 2026 covers the bigger drop on the Reddit side.
The studies count the video, not the comments
Ahrefs' 75,000-brand study found mentions in a YouTube video's title, transcript or description the factor most closely tied to AI visibility, at a correlation of about 0.73711. Its follow-up of Nov 3, 2026 counted transcripts only and put YouTube sixth at 0.64, behind Reddit mentions in ranking threads at 0.7512. Neither counted comments, and none of the studies here measured them.
So a comment works on the people watching. An AI answer that cites a review points buyers at that video, and your reply is what they find under it. Getting named inside the video is a separate job, usually a creator who tests your product, and getting recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity covers the other ways onto the AI side.
Finding the videos
YouTube's search filters do most of the sorting. As of Nov 3, 2026, the panel has the options below, and Prioritize offers only Relevance or Popularity, which YouTube says weighs a “video's view count and other relevance signals, such as watch time”13.
- Videos(pick this)
- Shorts
- Channels
- Playlists
- Movies
- Under 3 minutes
- 3 to 20 minutes(pick this)
- Over 20 minutes
- Today
- This week
- This month
- This year(pick this)
- Relevance(pick this)
- Popularity
- Live
- 4K
- HD
- Subtitles/CC
- Creative Commons
- 360°
- VR180
- 3D
- HDR
- Location
- Purchased
Step 1: Search the way a buyer does
Type what a buyer types: “best mattress for back pain”, “Snoozly review”, “Snoozly vs CloudNest”, “CloudNest alternative”. Your competitors' names find the head-to-heads.
Step 2: Set four filters
Type: Videos drops Shorts. Upload date: This year keeps the advice current. Duration: 3 to 20 minutes skips the clips (switch to Over 20 minutes for long reviews). Leave Prioritize on Relevance, since Popularity favors the most-watched videos, where comments run into the thousands.
Step 3: Ask the AI answers too
Ask the same buyer question in Google and in Perplexity, then open the sources. A video they cite is one buyers get pointed to. Ask twice, because the sources change between runs.
Step 4: Open the comments before you write
Look for comments switched on, viewers asking questions, replies from the last few weeks and a creator who answers. Read the channel guidelines if there are any.
Step 5: Write each comment fresh
One comment per video, in its own words, spread over days rather than posted in a batch. YouTube says repeatedly posting comments can be detected as spam.
Step 3 works the same way for Reddit, and finding the Reddit threads Google and ChatGPT already use walks through it with the same buyer questions.
Doing it alongside Reddit
The habits carry over from Reddit marketing, and two things change. A YouTube comment answers to one creator instead of a team of moderators. And the engines split: in LLM Pulse's week to Nov 2, Google's AI answers leaned on YouTube while Perplexity and Gemini leaned on Reddit3. A brand whose buyers ask more than one assistant needs both.
SlopMog runs both from one keyword list. It reads your site, pulls out keyword groups (YouTube gets its own), and finds Reddit threads and YouTube videos for them every day. Each one is scored for relevance, and the best land in your queue with a comment drafted in the thread's tone, for you to edit, approve or skip.
A regular comment costs 6 credits ($0.60) on either platform, so the $99 Test the Waters plan covers about 166 a month. High-Value discovery asks Gemini, Claude, GPT and Grok 40 buyer-style questions with live web search every week and ranks the Reddit threads and YouTube videos they cite. A comment on one of those is 60 credits ($6). There's no free trial, and the first payment has a 7-day refund.
Sources · checked Nov 3, 2026
- 1.YouTube Help, Manage spam in comments: support.google.com/youtube/answer/9482362
- 2.YouTube Help, Learn about comment settings: support.google.com/youtube/answer/9483359
- 3.LLM Pulse, Top cited domains per AI engine (7-day window, updated Nov 2, 2026): llmpulse.ai/data-studies/top-cited-domains
- 4.YouTube Help, Sharing links with your audiences: support.google.com/youtube/answer/13748639
- 5.Otterly.AI, YouTube AI Citation Study 2026 (30-day window), updated Mar 2, 2026: otterly.ai/blog/youtube-ai-citation-study-2026/
- 6.YouTube Help, Spam Policy: support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801973
- 7.Tubefilter, YouTube's banning clickable links from Shorts descriptions and comments, Aug 10, 2023: tubefilter.com/2023/08/10/youtube-shorts-comments-spam/
- 8.YouTube Help, Set your channel guidelines: support.google.com/youtube/answer/11895180
- 9.Ahrefs, the 50 most-cited websites in Perplexity (Brand Radar, US, November 2026): ahrefs.com/blog/most-cited-domains-perplexity/
- 10.Ahrefs, How ChatGPT Does Query Fan-Out (15 Million Queries Studied), Oct 12, 2026: ahrefs.com/blog/query-fan-out-chatgpt/
- 11.Ahrefs, Top Brand Visibility Factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews (75k Brands Studied), Dec 12, 2025: ahrefs.com/blog/ai-brand-visibility-correlations/
- 12.Ahrefs, Which Types of Mentions Correlate the Strongest With AI Visibility? (260M AI Prompts Analyzed), Nov 3, 2026: ahrefs.com/blog/mention-types-ai-visibility/
- 13.9to5Google, YouTube rolling out search filters update that renames and removes, Jan 8, 2026: 9to5google.com/2026/01/08/youtube-search-filters/
- 14.Octolens, YouTube monitoring (videos and comments) and pricing: octolens.com/youtube-monitoring
Questions people ask
Can you market by commenting on YouTube videos?
Yes, when the comment helps the person reading it. Comment under reviews, comparisons and how-to videos in your category, answer a question the video or a viewer left open, and name your product as one option. YouTube's Spam Policy targets repetitive comments that drive traffic, so write one fresh comment per video and leave the link out.
Can you post links in YouTube comments?
Yes on long-form videos, where links in comments are clickable. No on Shorts: links in Shorts comments stopped being clickable on Aug 31, 2023. Any creator can also hold every comment that contains a URL, and a held comment stays out of public view until they approve it, for up to 60 days.
Do YouTube comments show up in Google or AI answers?
The videos do, and no study we found measures the comments. In the week to Nov 2, 2026, LLM Pulse found youtube.com in 35.9% of Google AI Overviews answers, more than any other site. The Ahrefs studies linking YouTube to AI visibility count brand mentions in a video's title, transcript or description, not in its comments.
How do I stop YouTube flagging my comments as spam?
Write each comment fresh, leave links out, and don't post a run of them in a few minutes. YouTube detects spam from a comment's text and from the commenter's behavior, and says repeatedly posting comments can be detected as spam. A creator can still approve a held comment from the Held tab in YouTube Studio.
Is there a YouTube comment marketing tool?
Yes, of two kinds. Octolens monitors YouTube videos and the comments under them for your keywords and alerts you in Slack or email, from $199 a month billed monthly (as of Nov 3, 2026), and you write the reply. SlopMog finds YouTube videos and Reddit threads for your keywords every day and drafts each comment for you to approve, from $99 a month.
Get your brand into the threads people ask AI about
SlopMog finds the Reddit and YouTube threads in your niche every day, drafts a comment for each in the thread's tone, and posts the ones you approve from aged Reddit accounts.
Plans from $99/mo · 7-day refund on your first payment · Cancel anytime
