What Is A Highlighted Comment On YouTube: Overview & Features

Ever wondered what a highlighted comment on YouTube means or wished your comment gets highlighted too? This article teaches you everything you need to know about this YouTube feature.

Overview

When you view comments on a YouTube post with a phone or computer, you may see the phrase “Highlighted comment”. This tag appears above a specific comment or comment reply.

In the last sentence, I hinted that a YouTube “Highlighted comment” appears above the comment or a reply. It is important to clarify that while a “Highlighted comment” is displayed above the comment, a “Highlighted reply” is displayed above a reply.

The purpose of highlighting a comment is to differentiate the comment from the other comments.

So, a highlighted comment on YouTube is not too complex. YouTube only uses this feature to draw your attention to comments.

By drawing your attention to the specific comment, you can easily differentiate the comment from the numerous comments in the YouTube video. In the subsequent section, you’ll learn why this is useful.

How then does YouTube determine which comment to highlight? Let’s see how it works in the next section.

How Does it Work?

If you comment on a YouTube post and someone “likes/replies” your comment, YouTube will notify you through email. Then, if you click on the email notification to view the reaction, YouTube may highlight that comment automatically.

Moreover, if you upload a video on YouTube and someone else comments on your post, you’ll get a notification via email. Opening the notification to view the comment on your own post can turn the comment into a highlighted comment.

However, as I stated earlier, if YouTube highlights your own reply to a comment, it will tag your reply as “Highlighted reply”. On the contrary, if it highlights someone’s comment on your post, it will tag the comment “Highlighted comment”.

Just as highlighting a comment is an automatic process, so also is the process of unhighlighting a comment. When you’re done interacting with the comment, YouTube removes the highlight from a comment.

However, there are certain activities you can intentionally carry out to make YouTube unhighlight a comment. For example, you can edit the video’s URL and remove the comment ID with a highlight.

You will learn more about how to do this in this guide’s “Frequently Asked Question” section.

Features

So far, we’ve had an overview of comment highlighting on YouTube. Moreover, the previous section is a concise but comprehensive explanation of how this technology works.

Now, this section discusses the main characteristics of this YouTube comment feature.

Highlighted Comment on YouTube is an Automatic Feature

YouTube highlights a comment on a post due to your actions- opening comment from an email notification. Thus, YouTube doesn’t highlight a comment because you or another person wants it to do so.

This implies that the comment which carries the highlight on a YouTube page can change.

It is Visible to Only the Owner of the Post

The “Highlighted Comment” tag, displayed on top of the comment is only visible to the owner of the post. In other words, only the person who opened a comment via the email notification link can see it as a highlighted comment.

Highlighted Comments Benefit YouTube Creators and Users/Viewers

A viewer’s comment on a post can merit the highlight tag. Such a viewer will only receive notifications from YouTube when someone replies to his comment.

Similarly, if a YouTube creator opens a comment notification from his YouTube studio (backend), he can easily see the comment he opened. This makes it easy to interact with the specific comment.

A Highlighted Comment on YouTube is not Permanent

A highlight disappears after your interaction with the tagged comment. However, YouTube reloads the “highlighted comment” tag when you open the comment from a YouTube email notification again.

This does not imply that you can remove the “Highlighted comment” tag whenever you wish to do so. That’s because YouTube automates the process of comment highlighting.

Otherwise, you will have to change the URL of the video with the comment highlight.

Think of the life span of a highlighted comment this way. New Facebook notifications have light Cyan color, which turns white after opening them.

Though they are not the same, they are similar to some extent. After interacting with a highlighted comment (by closing the page), it disappears.

Specifically, when you open the YouTube page directly (not from the notification link), the previously “highlighted comment” tag disappears.

Pros of Highlighted Comment

Comment Highlights Make it Easy for you to Identify a Comment you Opened via an Email Notification.

When a comment gets the highlight tag, it makes it easy for you to differentiate the comment from the other comments. This makes it easy for you to engage with the comment.

You Can Use it to Designate a Comment for Follow-up

Highlighting can be useful if you want to follow up on a comment later. So, when you want to follow up on the comment later, you open the email notification and click the link. This is far better than scrolling through the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of comments to find the specific comment you want to follow up on.

It Can Help a Creator to Know What is Relevant to Their Audience

A YouTube creator can address possible issues in subsequent posts through closer interaction with a commenter. So, he will be able to tailor his reply to potential permanent customers.

It Helps to Optimize a YouTube Channel

As I mentioned earlier, comment highlighting differentiates one comment from other comments. After making one comment outstanding among others, you can examine such a comment closely.By scrutinizing and replying to highlighted comments, a YouTuber can win the interest of potential subscribers

Cons of Highlighted Comment

You Have Little or No Control Over it

As I earlier pointed out, you don’t have control over whether a YouTube comment is highlighted or not. YouTube automatically tags a comment as “Highlighted” when you open it via an email notification link.

It has No Direct Profit

Highlighting a comment is not like adding a new subscriber to one’s channel. Also, it doesn’t mean a new customer is following your page.While getting a new subscriber/follower means having a new customer, highlighting a comment is different. The latter only helps in differentiating a comment opened through YouTube notifications.

It Can Cause a “Comment failed to post” Error on Some Browsers

A highlighted comment can prevent browsers like Firefox from posting or replying to comments on the same video.Some persons are only able to overcome this error using a Chrome browser. However, if you have only Firefox browser, your comment will fail to post on a video with highlighted comments.

Not All Highlighted Comments are Beneficial to a YouTube Creator

Any comment can get a highlight depending on how you interact. This means that irrelevant messages can get a highlight too

Conclusion

All things considered, a highlighted comment on YouTube can be helpful. However, its benefits do not come in direct ways.

Nevertheless, it helps you locate the comment you opened from an email notification easily. Hence, only comments that are opened from an email notification link can be a highlighted comment.

Besides, replies to a comment can also be highlighted. However, as with comments, only replies opened from an email notification link can be highlighted.

I hope this article answered the question, “what is a highlighted comment on YouTube”?

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