Does comments count as page text length?

I was wondering, many people say you should write at least 500 word articles, but what if I wrote 50 word article and then had 9 comments averaging 50 words each on that page? How would Google see it? 50 or 500 words?

500.

Comments can be great for SEO. Lots of places use this by asking a question of their visitors.

"Of Windows and Linux, why do you prefer one over the other? Best comment gets a $10 gift card for Sizzler." - People go apeshit over that and, poof. You have tons of Windows/Linux relevant content. Some better than others, of course.

yes, comments count as article. It happened to me lot of time to search for something, and the answer was on a comment on a website. You can try it yourself. So, comments can even help your website rank for different keywords

Sigh........

Content is used as a quality factor and a signal of relevance.

If you comments are quality and on topic they contribute to your social signals and an increase in authority.

-aReJay