In the current media world, there is a huge debate about the importance of the visibility of a news website in order to secure its existence. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) practices have emerged in the news media systems around the world. This study aimed to expand the current literature about the SEO practices by focusing on examining, via the walkthrough method, the ways that news companies allow the users to comment on their online news articles. The comments on the news websites are related to the notions of social influence, information diffusion, and play an essential role as a SEO practice, for instance, by providing content and engagement. The examined sample was collected by the most visited news websites' rankings of alexa.com for a global scale and for the countries Greece and Cyprus. The findings reveal that the news websites throughout the globe use similar features and ways to support the comments of the users. In the meantime, though, a high number of the news websites did not allow the users to use their social media accounts in order to comment the provided news articles, or provided multiple comment platforms. This trend goes against the SEO practices. It is believed that this finding is associated with the difficulty of the news organizations to regulate and protect themselves by the users' comments that promote, in some case harmful rhetoric and polarization.Future Internet 2019, 11, 188 2 of 13 behavior. In the meantime, social influence is related to information diffusion. Many studies in the field have revealed the connections between the social influence and the information diffusion [10][11][12][13][14]. Information diffusion and social influence have become of great importance due to the daily use of social media platforms and the operation of search engines.Additionally, previous studies of social media platforms, such as YouTube, have demonstrated that users with similar cultural and political ideas tend to like or dislike the same cultural products [15]. For instance, Japan was one of the most characteristic examples of a country that became successful in the spread of its culture on a global scale. The anime and the manga cultural products have turned into global products. According to Otmazgin [16], this development allows Japan to have a greater influence on different state and non-state actors throughout the world. The aforementioned description regarding the influence of a country has led Nye [17] to create the theory of "soft power." According to him, "soft power" is the capability of causing individuals to adopt beliefs, results, opinions, etc., without getting paid. For a country, its "soft power" can be its policies and culture.Nowadays, social influence and information diffusion are strongly linked with the World Wide Web, social media platforms, and social participation. For more than twenty years, scholars have tried to explain the role of the new technologies in the participation of the public in crucial events, such as demonstrations and collective actions [18]....