Eddie On Everything

What is a Trackback or Pingback?

June 13, 2006 on 1:10 pm | In internet |

Q: What is a “Trackback” or “Pingback?”

A: Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of blogging! The term “trackback,” sometimes called a “pingback,” is shorthand for “trackback link” or “pingback link.” It’s an automatically generated link that blog software uses to identify other blog posts that refer to the blog post in question. In other words, when someone else links to a post on your blog, their software may try to send a “trackback” or “pingback.” If your blog software supports trackbacks, your post will then automatically display a link to the to the other person’s post that links to yours.

Trackbacks allow a reader to obtain more information on a given topic. They also encourages bloggers to link to one another, as it increases blog visibility. If you’re a new blogger, you can promote your blog by linking to posts on popular blogs, thus getting you a “trackback link” that many people will see.

As with any attention-getting technique, the trackback system has been overrun by spammers. Fortunately, a number of plugins exist for dealing with trackback spam - do a search for “trackback spam” and your blog software name to find them.

Because dealing with the spam can be a huge pain in the butt, though, you may want to disable trackbacks on your blog alltogether.

I’ve left the trackbacks on this blog post open, so if you’d like to experiment with trackbacks, just create a post on your blog that links to this one. When you do, this page will automatically display a link back to your post. (Keep in mind that this link may take a while to show up — I may have to manually “approve” your trackback.)

Hope this helps!