What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?

Have you accidentally stumbled on a YouTube comment with the label ‘Pinned by Creator’ when you were just watching random videos?

What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?
Table of Contents
- What Does Highlight Comment Mean On YouTube?
- Where to access your YouTube’s Comment Section?
   - How to Turn Video Comments On and Off
   - How to Moderate Video Comments
   - How to Reply to Comments on YouTube
- Should You Answer Your Comments?
- Uses of Highlighted Comment Feature
What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?
The highlighted comment means that said comment has higher significance than others for you.

You might just come across a highlighted comment on YouTube, and it’s one of the many features that the company launches to enhance your browsing experience.

Regardless if you’re a viewer or a channel owner, you can highlight any comment on any video.

Let’s dive deeper into everything you need to know about YouTube’s highlighted comments.

What Does Highlight Comment Mean On YouTube?

Highlighting comments is a YouTube feature that aims to enhance users’ browsing experience while on the platform.

You can highlight comments by clicking on the timestamp next to the comment like this:

What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?

Once you click on the timestamp, your page should reload, and the comment will be shown as a highlighted comment.

What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?

The highlighted comment means that said comment has higher significance than others for you. If that’s still not clear enough, let’s take a look at another example.

Let’s say you left a comment on a video you watched yesterday, and you received notification later that somebody replied to it.

When you click on your notification, you’ll be redirected to the relevant video with that specific reply being highlighted – like this example below:

What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?

Whether you’re a regular user or a content creator with a channel on YouTube, you can benefit from having a highlighted comment since it’ll make it easier to stay updated with that comment.

But the comment highlight feature is handy if you are a creator since you can keep track of individual comments and add a personal reply.

A highlighted comment takes the top spot under a video, even above pinned comments. If you want to see what a highlighted comment for yourself, you can click the links below:

  • This link will show you a highlighted comment as the first comment.
  • While this link will lead you to the same video but with a different comment highlighted.
  • This link will lead to the same video but without any highlighted comment.

If you check the naked link for each of the varieties above, it will look something like this:

  • “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTJczUoc26U&lc=UgwUn_JSvOMTCQAOI7J4AaABAg”
  • “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTJczUoc26U&lc=UgzXmmkdxRrKtxWulu94AaABAg”
  • “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTJczUoc26U”

Notice how the one with a highlighted link is much longer? The highlighted comments are embedded into the URL with the “lc” parameter, which is why you’ll see different comments highlighted under each video.

Where to access your YouTube’s Comment Section?

If you have a YouTube channel where people are commenting on your videos, you may want to moderate some comments with inappropriate words.

Otherwise, you’ll risk having your channel flagged as inappropriate for underage – and therefore appear less in search results and recommendations.

You can do several things through YouTube Studio, including turning on/off comments, replying to them, moderating which one you want to appear, and even reporting or deleting specific comments.

You can access the comment section for your videos from the YouTube Studio panel.

  • Open up YouTube and click on your channel icon at the top right corner of your screen.
  • Click on the ‘YouTube Studio‘ menu, and you’ll be redirected to the Studio panel.
  • Locate the ‘Comments’ menu under the left hamburger menu.
  • You will see all the comments left by viewers on your videos there.
What Does Highlighted Comment Mean On YouTube?

Now that you’ve learned how to access the comments left by viewers on your videos let’s discuss how to do several different actions to your comments.

How to Turn Video Comments On and Off

When you upload a video to YouTube, you should check if people can comment on it. Here’s how to check if your comment section is available.

  • Go to your YouTube Studio panel.
  • Head to the Settings menu.
  • Select Community.
  • From there, you can choose to allow all comments, hold comments for review, or disable all comments.
  • Select the option to allow all comments.

You can also add filters to sort through comments by blocking certain words or users automatically.

How to Moderate Video Comments

Moderating the comment section on your videos means you’ll act as the host to a social gathering. This means you will need to do the following:

  • Delete inappropriate or offensive comments on your videos.
  • Block certain users from commenting on your future videos.
  • Start discussions by asking questions in the comments.
  • Reply to comments and questions on your videos.

When you’re moderating and replying to comments, you may come across highlighted comments.

It’s automatic labeling generated by YouTube to put a highlight on a specific comment. The highlighted comment will automatically disappear when you’ve responded to it.

How to Reply to Comments on YouTube

If other users are trying to communicate with you through comments, you should not leave them hanging.

You can reply to their comments by heading back to the YouTube Studio page and selecting the Comments menu from the left panel menu.

Depending on your setting, you may see the comments under the Published or the Held for Review tab.

You can’t reply to comments that are still under review – so you’ll have to approve them first. It’s also worth noting that comments under review are only available for 60 days and will disappear after that period. You have two options of replying to YouTube comments:

  1. Using the smart reply feature: YouTube has several pre-generated messages that you can use to reply to comments quickly. Messages like “Thanks” or “Awesome” are available to use right off the bat. But YouTube is improving its algorithm as we speak.
  1. Manual reply: If there are queries that require a more logical and extensive answer, you can hit the Reply button and start typing your response. You can also click on the thumbs up, thumbs down, or heart icon to engage with a reaction instead.

Should You Answer your comments?

Yes, you should always reply to comments on your videos whenever you get the chance. Engaging your audience is a crucial method that you can leverage to speed up your channel’s growth.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, only behind its older sibling Google.

With over two billion monthly active users, YouTube’s algorithm constantly struggles to recommend the best videos for its users.

One of the metrics that YouTube uses to determine if a video is worth recommending is, of course, the comments.

Comments and the like and dislike ratio can show how the video resonates with its viewers. The more comments your video gets, the more people will see it on their recommendation.

To keep the engagement going, you need to make sure that you always reply to comments – especially those in the form of questions and relevant opinions.

But, understandably, you won’t be able to respond to each one of the thousands of comments your videos get.

So, be wise in separating the comments that are worth replying to from the spammy ones.

Uses of Highlighted Comment Feature

So, what does the highlighted comment mean?

The short answer is nothing – the highlighted comment only acts as a marker for a comment that you’d like to pay closer attention to while watching a video. 

You could use the highlight comment feature on several occasions:

  • Marking a comment to double-check its relevance in the video.
  • Individually reply to multiple comment threads you’re following.
  • For creators, it helps them keep track of every comment they want to respond to.

Since highlighted comments are meant to be a user-experience enhancement feature, it’s helpful for both creators and viewers alike.

It’s a nifty feature that can bring the relevant comment from your notification to your attention and pinning it to the top of the comment section.

By having relevant comments highlighted, you won’t lose it among the hundreds of other comments and, therefore, can reply to it once you’ve thought about your point.

Conclusions

YouTube is a unique combination between a video-sharing platform, social media, and search engine with all types of video.

Whether you want to watch online courses or videos of people throwing eggs at random objects, you can find channels with those types of content on YouTube.

For creators, comments are one of the divine metrics that can determine the success and visibility of their videos (and, by extension, their channel).

The more comments a video gets, YouTube will put it on a higher pedestal and recommend it to people with the same interests.

That’s why as creators, you should moderate and respond to comments on your videos carefully. You will keep the conversation going by responding to relevant comments on your videos, and the effect will snowball into thousands of comments before you know it.

With the highlighted comment feature, you can easily track individual comments that you want to respond to.

The highlighted comment feature will pin a specific comment onto the very top part of the comment section, even above the pinned comment.

Moderating your video comments section is also important to filter out offensive comments, leading to YouTube flagging your video and channel as inappropriate for the younger audience.

Scroll to Top