Have you seen ‘LINKED COMMENT‘ in YouTube? Few days back, one of our readers asked us a question – ‘What is YouTube Linked Comment? Why can’t I reply on all linked comments?‘

Well, before discussing the solution, let me give you brief background about our reader’s situation. Our reader has a popular YouTube channel with 50+ videos. He has noticed that few comments on his YouTube videos are marked as ‘LINKED COMMENT’. Also few of such comments have ‘Reply’ option active and for others there is no ‘Reply’ button. So he wanted to know what is YouTube Linked Comment and why there is such behaviour difference between two linked comments.

So what is YouTube Linked Comment?

Google marks a comment as ‘LINKED COMMENT’ if it is coming from Google+. Suppose you have shared a video on Google+ and your viewer has commented on that video from his Google+ page. You can see that comment on your YouTube video but marked as ‘LINKED COMMENT’.

But why ‘Reply’ option is not available for all linked comments?

This is because your viewer has restricted replies on Google+ page settings. As the comment came from Google+ page and viewer has restricted replies, there is nothing you can do here to make the ‘Reply‘ option available.

To verify further, you can go to your viewer’s Google+ page and locate your video where he has commented. You should not see ‘Add a comment‘ box.

Is there any workaround to get back ‘Reply’ button?

There are couple of workarounds that you could try to get the ‘Reply’ option.

– You could ask your viewer to add you in his Google+ circle. If your viewer has given reply permission to his circle, you will get the ‘Reply’ button back.

– If the first workaround does not work for you, copy the comment and post it as a new comment. This will make ‘Reply’ option active.

Was it enough to clear your doubt? If you have any question about YouTube Linked Comment, Please feel free to comment below.

Keep in touch, follow TechOneStop on Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Goolge+.

Also read: Policy Breach Notice: We are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google from the account

Recently one of our readers has received an email from Google AdSense Publishers with subject line ‘Policy Breach Notice‘.

As email didn’t give him enough information to clear his doubt, he dropped us email asking more information. He also mentioned that he didn’t receive any prior email regarding policy breach violation.

Email looks like below:

Dear Publisher,

We have now verified that we are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google from the account(s) under your control.

Thank you for helping to resolve this matter.

Regards,
The Google Policy Team

After our small research, we got to know that this problem is not with our particular reader only. Many of our readers have received the same email.

What is PII and how it is related to Policy Breach Notice?

PII stands for Personally Identifiable Information. To protect your account, Google AdSense policies mandate publishers not to pass any data to Google that may be recognized as Personally Identifiable Information. If any publisher does so, Google sends a notification email with subject line ‘Policy Breach Notice’ first to fix the issue. Once the affected publisher fixes the PII issue, Google sends the above email.

As you didn’t not receive any prior email to fix the PII issue, we think Google AdSense has sent this email by mistake.

However we have asked the question to Google also to give more information. If we receive any update, we will share it with you all.

So don’t worry and keep blogging !

*** Updated on 6th March, 2015: We told you that the mail must be sent out by mistake. Today we have received an email from Google asking for an apology for sending erroneous email. Probably you have also received the same email.

If you have any question about ‘Policy Breach Notice‘, Please feel free to comment below.

Keep in touch, follow TechOneStop on Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Goolge+.

Also read: YouTube Linked Comment – why I can’t reply?