Search engines and comment tags

When robots scan through a site, do they pick up any of the domain names or information listed in comment tags? For instance, if you get a script from somebody, on the top of each page they may have the designers name, email address and the domain name of where you can get the script from commented out.

Ex:

<!-- This script developed by www.scriptname.com -->

Do the search engines see this at all?

 

That's a good question, and it would seem to make sense.
Just think of all the word press plug ins and themes that are designed or scripted by someone and the link juice is everywhere.
Some of the more popular themes would result in 100's of thousands of backlinks.

 

Yeah, thats what I was thinking. All of the really popular scripts have a ton of comments about it in the beginning of each file along with their URL. I was thinking that maybe the search engines pick it up somehow, although when you view source on a page you don't see it.

I would really like to see a definate answer on this. I have not been able to find one.

 

Since the search engines are smart enough to see if a link is the same color as the background, I'm sure they are smart enough to now if a link is in a comment. I doubt that it would even register anyways, since it wouldn't be in a <a href=> tag.

 

well the creators URL is in the source files. That has to be picked up, right?
Every single plug in I have has the originators URL right on the plug in, inside of my dashboard.

 

I think its more for people who "View Source", and the designer of the WP theme wants some free traffic. It would make sense since its on thousands of blogs, I am sure some people view source and read it.. you guys did

 

Im not saying that it would actually get you a backlink, Im just saying that it may possibly help for your site's popularity- even if the engine recongnizes it in a different fashion.