Bloggers are spamming other bloggers with phony WordPress trackbacks.
That alone makes it imperative for all ethical bloggers to understand the issue of WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks and how they can be manipulated to gain valid links from unsuspecting webmasters – and act accordingly.
Of course, there are many more benefits to knowing how to properly use WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks, including driving referral traffic back to your site.
First, let me quickly explain what trackbacks and pingbacks are.
Essentially, both trackbacks and pingbacks are ways for blogs to communicate with each other.
Because of the kind of technology trackbacks use, they are much more prone to spam than pingbacks.
What Are Trackbacks?
Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog system.
Here’s how the theory of trackbacks works, according to WordPress Codex:
Wait… What?…
I’ve been blogging for 3 years now and have never seen things work this way.
You?
Lisa Irby (who runs a killer blog, by the way) can publish something on her blog relating to my post and, without actually linking to my original post, she can send me a trackback URI (not to be confused with URL), and I will publish that on my original post as a comment?
It doesn’t sound familiar because it simply no longer works that way – not on WordPress sites anyway.
Trackbacks were very easily abused for several reasons:
- there was no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback,
- the receiving blogger could edit the contents of the trackback on their own server,
- and indeed they could be easily faked.
These are just some of the reason why WordPress blogs use pingbacks instead of trackbacks.
As I mentioned above, they both do the same thing: notify a blogger that someone talked about them on another blog, but the notification mechanism is different, which makes pingbacks much more difficult to fake.
What Are Pingbacks?
Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks.
Now this makes much more sense, doesn’t it?
All Adrienne Smith needs to do is to mention me in one of her posts for me to automatically get a WordPress pingback, and thus be notified of the mention.
On the surface of things, pingbacks and trackbacks sound very much alike with most significant differences being:
- Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
- Pingbacks do not send any content.
- They can’t be edited by the recipient blogger.
However, as a blogger do you REALLY care to dig into the semantics? Sounds like “You say potato, I say potahto“, doesn’t it?
And that’s exactly what happened with WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks – both terms are now used interchangeably to refer to a notification sent to a blog when another blog links to it.
All you really need to know is how trackbacks and pingbacks affect your blog, both positively and negatively.
Side note: for the purpose of this post and to save my hands from carpal tunnel, I’ll stick to the word “trackback”.
Where Do You See Trackbacks in WordPress?
Let’s go over what a WordPress trackback looks like in your dashboard and how it ends up there.
How to Enable WordPress Trackbacks
For two blogs to communicate via trackbacks, both of them need to have that option enabled in WordPress.
It’s enabled by default, but to double-check or to simply know where to find it, from your WP dashboard go to Settings => Discussion, and make sure that the top two options are checked.
Now your blog is ready to send and receive WordPress trackbacks.
How to Receive a WordPress Trackback
So Ryan Hanley decided to mention Traffic Generation Café in in this post at his blog:
Once he published the post, WordPress automatically sent me a trackback, i.e. a notification of Ryan’s mention.
How do I know that?
I saw the trackback in my “Pending” comment section:
How to Send a WordPress Trackback
Sending a trackback to another blog is as simple as mentioning them in your next blog post, as you saw in the example above.
However, WordPress system is not perfect (go figure!) and your trackback might not ever reach the recipient:
- it might end up in spam instead of moderation;
- the blogger might not have their WordPress trackback notifications enabled;
- it might show up in the comment section months after you mentioned them (happens!);
- etc.
Therefore, when mentioning another blog in your post, I always, always, always recommend to let them know in addition to letting WordPress automatically ping them:
1. Let them know via one of their social media profiles
(make sure it’s the one they regularly check, whether it’s Twitter, or Facebook, or Google+).
When you do it this way, not only you let them know of the mention, but also potentially expose your post to their followers as well.
For instance, from my How to Get Traffic and Links from Blog Roundups post:
2. Always link to their posts, NOT their home page.
No WordPress trackback will be sent when you link to a blog home page, thus I always recommend you link to a specific post, even if you are mentioning the blog in general.
For instance, even though all you see is blogs names in this list, those name are actually linked to the link roundup posts, not the home page:
What to Do with WordPress Trackbacks?
If a WordPress trackback acts like any other comment, then you can choose to publish them like any other comment, send them to spam, if they are spam (we’ll talk about that in a minute), or trash them.
1. Publish Trackbacks
If you choose to publish a WordPress trackback, it’ll show up in the comment section of your post. Depending on how your blog is set up, it’ll either be in its own separate section titled “Trackbacks” or “Pingbacks” (like shown in a previous screenshot) or be intermixed with regular comments, like this:
Should you publish trackbacks?
Completely up to you.
Personally, I don’t.
My logic behind it is based on what I know about SEO – if a blog links to your post (yay! you’ve got a link!), it’s good for your link building and search engine rankings. If you link right back to them by publishing their trackback, you are basically creating a reciprocal link, effectively canceling the SEO benefit you got when they linked to you in the first place. Makes sense?
However, many SEO blogs do publish trackbacks, so my logic on the issue might be faulty.
If you do choose to publish WordPress trackbacks, just make sure they don’t lead to a spammy website.
While Google might not spank your site simply because a spammy site linked to you (since you don’t have much control over who links out to you), they are much more likely to give you a penalty if you end up linking OUT to a spammy site yourself – after all, whom YOU link out to is entirely under your control.
We’ll talk about spam pingbacks/trackbacks below.
Should you publish self-trackbacks?
When you deep-link your current post to other related posts on your blog, that’s called deep linking or inter-linking (exactly what I just did).
Since WordPress doesn’t differentiate between links from one blog to another vs links within the same blog, you’ll see a trackback from your own post in your comment moderation queque.
Whether you choose to publish trackbacks or not, my strong opinion is that you should NOT publish self-trackbacks.
Some of the reasons (very quickly):
- you don’t want to dilute your valuable links on any given page (too many links are bad for both your readers and search engines);
- your best bet to provide related resources (i.e. other related posts) is to either deep link posts within content and/or use a plugin to display related posts at the end or in the sidebar.
What I do at Traffic Generation Café is disable self-pings altogether. My CommentLuv Premium allows me to do that (more on anti-spam plugins below):
UPDATE: thanks to +Rahul Tilloo for mentioning a No Self Pings plugin in the Google+ comment section of this post – something you should definitely install on your blog, if you don’t use CommentLuv Premium or any other plugin to prevent self-pings. However… as of today, this plugin hasn’t been updated in over two years.
2. Send Trackbacks to Spam
Now we are making a full circle back to the statement I made in the beginning on this post:
Bloggers are spamming other bloggers with phony trackbacks.
That’s very unfortunate and we need to be aware of the problem to both protect our blogs from spam and protect our blogging reputation by avoiding inadvertently sending spam trackbacks to other blogs.
How do you know spam trackbacks from legitimate ones?
1. This is what spam trackbacks look like in my pending comments (click to enlarge).
2. This is what one of those sites looks like when I click on the trackback link (their link to my blog is highlighted in yellow).
This is what is referred to as a spam blog or splog.
What makes a splog a splog?
- they provide no content and no value
- their sole purpose is to earn money via AdSense, etc. or build links for a primary site of sorts
- non-existent traffic, comments, or any other evidence of user engagement – after all, that’s not what they are for.
3. If I were to approve this spammy trackback, I would end up with this kind of link as part of my comment section:
You can see right away that it doesn’t make much sense, unlike the previous example with a legitimate WordPress trackback.
How do you REALLY know when it’s a spam trackback?
Sometimes you click over to the site you got a trackback from and it’s as clear as night and day it’s a low-quality spam site.
Once I got an innocently looking WordPress trackback that lead me to a porn site (YIKES!).
The best you can do is to go over to that site and look around. If in doubt, don’t publish that trackback.
Here’s another example of publishing spam trackbacks – this time it comes from a well-respected Problogger.net (just goes to show that we all make mistakes when first starting our blogs):
I happened to stumble upon many earlier Problogger posts that published trackbacks (they no longer do it – must’ve learned from their mistakes). Most of those trackbacks are either spam or lead to 404 pages.
3. Trash Trackbacks
That’s what I choose to do with trackbacks at Traffic Generation Café – I trash them.
But before I do, I always:
- Click over to the site that sent the trackback – to see what kind of sites link to me and why;
- Take note of trackbacks that are sent by low-quality sites – in our day and age of Google spitting out algo changes faster than a woman changes her mind on the color of her nail polish, it’s good to keep track of them in case you might have to disavow those links at some point;
- Leave a comment thanking the blogger for a legitimate link – the very least you can do for someone who made the effort of mentioning you.
How to Avoid Spamming Bloggers with Trackbacks
If you are a spammer, chances are this falls on deaf ears or you won’t be reading this to begin with.
There are several WordPress plugins that send phony trackbacks to other blogs to trick those bloggers into approving the trackbacks and thus giving away quality links back to the blogs that run those plugins.
Most of these plugin creators do an incredible job wording their products in such a way that they get you excited about them without actually revealing HOW the plugins work.
They make claims like this one:
Sounds great, right?
Only this plugin (Digi Autolinks) “fakes” trackbacks to other blogs to collect unearned links from them.
You can read more about spam trackback plugins, as well as other unethical backlink plugins in Gail Gardener’s TrackBack Spam: Blacklist Blogs Using Trackback Spammers Blogging Backlink Spamming Plugins.
Also, check out Lorelle VanFossen’s Sharing Without Context to learn more about plugins that automatically add hidden “related content” sections for the sake of earning trackback links. As far as I am concerned, that’s another form of spam WordPress trackbacks.
How to Protect Yourself from Spam Trackbacks
As with many other WordPress plugins, there’s no shortage of anti-spam plugins.
Here are my personal suggestions.
1. Say NO to Akismet
You heard me right.
Akismet is the de facto (and default) spam-fighting plugin for WordPress. And why wouldn’t it be: the company behind it (Automattic) owns both Akismet and WordPress – that’s why it’s automatically installed on every WordPress blog.
However, just because it’s a default plugin, doesn’t mean it’s the best.
My main problem with Akismet is the fact that it has blacklisted me and Traffic Generation Café (yep, I am a spammer!) a couple of years ago and no matter how many times I’ve written to their customer service department, all I’ve gotten back were some boiler-plate emails and no resolution.
And I am not alone – plenty of other great bloggers are pretty much banned from leaving comments on Akismet-enabled blogs or sending legitimate WordPress trackbacks to them.
You can read more about my Akismet woes in this post:
Bottom line: Akismet blocks a lot of legitimate comments and still lets through a bunch of junk.
2. Use CommentLuv Premium
If you have CommentLuv Premium installed on your blog, you’ve got all the spam-fighting power you need.
Just make sure your GASP module is enabled and go over the settings to choose which ones work best for your blog (word of wisdom – don’t be too restrictive on the settings; you still want your legitimate commentators to express their thoughts without being sent back with a “You used too few words in your comment!” message):
(click on the image to see the full version)
And here are my settings related specifically to trackbacks (scroll all the way down in your GASP settings to see yours):
3. Simple Trackback Validation Plugin
If you don’t have CommentLuv Premium, you can still use GASP (stands for “Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin“) as a stand-alone free plugin.
However, the free version doesn’t have the options to protect you from spam trackbacks. I’d still recommend installing it instead of Akismet, but to stop trackback spam specifically, I’d go for Simple Trackback Validation (free plugin).
From Simple Trackback Validation plugin description: “Simple Trackback Validation Plugin performs a simple but very effective test on all incoming trackbacks in order to stop trackback spam.”
How it works:
When a trackback is received, this plugin
- checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to. This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.
- retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.
- Plus, it checks for topsy.com trackbacks and marks them as spam.
Simple and effective.
How To Use Trackbacks for SEO Traffic
This is a traffic generation strategy that my email subscribers know very well about (if you are not one of them, join my spam-free email list plus get my free website traffic report here).
In short, many blogs (including very high-trafficked high PR ones) choose to publish trackbacks they get from other blogs.
Here’s how it works:
- You link out to their post from your post.
- They are notified about the link in the form of a trackback.
- They approve the trackback.
- It shows up as a link back to your blog post in their comment section.
Usually those trackbacks are displayed just above the comment section and let me tell you: MOST commentators look at those links either out of curiosity or to find related content on other blogs.
Either way, as far as you are concerned, blogs that publish trackbacks ROCK and could bring in a nice amount of traffic.
To learn more about this strategy and how I use it to drive traffic to Traffic Generation Café, you’ll just have to get on my email list.
And no, I won’t publish a list of blogs that publish trackbacks – it’s too easy to abuse those awesome blogs. All you need to do to find them is to keep your eyes open when going through comment sections; that’s what I did to compile my list.
This web traffic strategy was also mentioned in:
Mind you, while this works to generate some traffic back to your site, this trackback strategy has very little to no SEO value.
WordPress Trackbacks Marketing Takeaway
WordPress trackbacks are misunderstood. They are easily (and often unknowingly) abused. They might clutter your pending comments.
However, wordpress trackbacks are also powerful.
They are good for web traffic. And now you know how to use and NOT to use them.
Use Wordpress trackbacks wisely.
Excellent site you have here Ana… It’s hard to find high quality writing like yours these days. I honestly appreciate individuals like you…
Cheers!
So very kind of you, Robert!
Thank you Ana,
As before just another piece of gold! Thank you, anything I can do for you?
A kind offer (and a compliment!) indeed, Guillaume.
How come you mychoice2you website is somewhat of a… dead end? A placeholder for a future business?
Very nice article and Thanks for your tutorials for WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks.
You are very welcome, Ashhab.
I totally agree with you Ana, thank you to reminding: never stop learning!
Apart from my limited English, the way you write and deliver your tips makes it easy for me to understand, just need to read it once or maximum twice. Thanks for this great idea and for notifying me.
From one non-native English speaker to another – so glad you find my writing easy to understand, Karyawadi; even with something slightly technical like trackbacks and pingbacks. ?
Hey Ana,
Interesting post.
I’ve two comments:
1. Askimet? Pffft. God, I hate that plugin. And there are some very good antispam plugins out there that are free. Just opened that link in an other post and am going to grab a coffee before I get stuck into that.
I like to use Disqus for comments. Not alone do people have to log in with a social account (haven’t had a single spam comment since) but you can follow comments across different blogs, which is interesting. Do you nnot find you get a lot of spammy comments with CommentLuv?
2. Haven’t had said coffee yet, so forgive the brain freeze – but that referral link thing (aaaagh – whaddayacallit!) referral spam?!
Man, oh man, that’s been the bane of my life at times. How do you manage that? I hope you can help me with that cos no one else has been able to yet 🙁
Dave
Hey, Dave:
1. Right you are – Akismet has become the de facto anti-spam plugin since Automattic owns it; however, it’s far from the best.
2. What was that about a referral link/spam? Make sure you have your coffee in hand when getting back to me on that one. 😉
LOL – sorry Ana – I was so tired I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d love to know hoe you deal with referral spam? You know that devious thing where people visit your site so they will show up in your stats in the vain hope you need a pair of Ray Bans from China.
Can’t believe it’s taking me so long to respond to your comments, Dave! You are just that special… 😉
One of the reasons I took my time was because I was trying to find this post by Jennifer Slegg: http://www.thesempost.com/google-analytics-referral-spam-removed/. According to that post, Google Analytics referral spam is no longer showing up in reporting.
Since referral spam doesn’t really affect a website in any real way other than spamming/inflating our Analytics, this should sanitize our stats. On the downside, many folks loved those traffic numbers even though they were fake. lol
Very nice looking website there Ana, I really like the layout especially your layout of the posts on the left side of your website.
Kenneth C Young
Thank you, Kenneth.
anna, can u tell me which comment box plugin you used on your blog, or make a post and listed all those which u use on your blog with ur refferal links
I’ve been thinking about writing a post with the plugins I use at Traffic Generation Café; still need to.
Not sure what comment plugin you are talking about, but I use native WP system plug Google+ comments by Alex Moss.
I didn’t know about Trackbacks & Pingbacks. I though these are not important to my blog. After reading your article I’ve understand about these. Many many thanks for sharing this article with us.
You are very welcome.
Hey there Ana! This is very helpful. I was not aware of pingbacks and trackbacks at all. I never thought that it can be used to see how far your post reached. I’ll ask my senior who is running a blog to do this so that we can have an increase in traffic.
Glad I could help.
Thanks for this, Ana. I usually publish pingbacks, but you have a point here about reciprocal links. I’ve never thought of it like that before. I’ll be doing it differently from now on.
You are so very welcome, Anne.
If more sites had real information like yours and combined with with real networking via comments. Digital and Social Media would change almost overnight. Great article on pingbacks vs trackbacks.
DocLou
Too bad it will never happen, Louis. lol
Hi Ana, I have only recently discovered your site and am really enjoying your in-depth posts (and knowledge!). I had not looked into trackbacks/pingbacks yet so was very interested to see the difference.
I saw your comment to Bren about monitoring your brand online, and was wondering what kind of tools you are using? I have seen SocialMention before. Any others you would recommend?
Thanks again for your post
ashley
Thanks for reading, Ashley.
I use http://www.talkwalker.com/alerts for my alerts; it’s free and works great. Set it up for your name, your blog name, or any other products you want to be associated with.
Hi Ana, I had trackbacks on up until just a few weeks ago. I was literally getting a couple hundred spammers everyday that I had to scan before removing. I must have gotten on someone’s list or something. They went directly into the spam box but so did good trackback, and sometimes good comment, so wading through that just got to be too much. I turned them off via CommentLuv.
Just yesterday, I was watching an old video by Matt Cutts where he recommended a WP plugin , Cookies for Comments. I have no idea if it still works or if it will help with trackback spam but the idea is only people that actually visited the page can leave a comment. I would imagine it would work with trackbacks and pingbacks. I’m going to give it a try and turn trackbacks back on.
BTW, I really love some of the graphics you are using lately. 🙂
No wonder I have to hunt you down every time I mention you in a post, Brian… lol
I do understand the spam issue though. I am surprise I manage to control it so well at Traffic Generation Café; I barely get any spam here. Of course, it also hurts my feelings a bit – why am I not good enough for spammers, what’s up with that??? 😉
I haven’t heard about Cookies for Comments, but will check it out; sounds interesting. Of course, it doesn’t make too much sense for trackbacks specifically – since it’s not an actual comment, just a link, then technically, the blogger wouldn’t be on the page… Anyway, will check it out.
I had disable trackbacks and pings on my blog as I was getting tons of spams on it and as you have mentioned you can’t control who is linking to you especially if that site is in a bad neighbourhood. Haven’t tried G+ commenting system as yet but it does look good on your blog.
We’ll get spam no matter what, Dominique; we just have to evaluate what makes more sense for our business – getting some spam, but also the legit trackbacks, or turning it all of and finding other ways to keep up with mentions.
Great article about trackback and pingback Ana. You inspire me how to make my blog better and better
Thanks, Steven.
Wow thanks so much for this awesome information Ana. This isn’t a lie – but I’ve never heard such information about trackbacks and pingbacks before. Thanks again.
Love the awesome presentation by the way – I like taking information visually 🙂
You are right, Lisa – most bloggers don’t talk about trackbacks and pingbacks simply because they don’t really know what they are or how to take advantage of them.
I wish I found a post like this when I was doing research on the topic, but since I couldn’t, I had to write one myself.
Thanks for coming by!
This is definitely interesting.
Thank you for giving us a great content on trackbacks.
I thought about Commentluv.
I started watching the sales video and I couldn’t get through it all. It really turned me off the product.
It’s amazing how easy it is for that to happen.
I know you endorse it, so I’m less hesitant. I’m just being cheap about it right now lol.
Having said all that, very interesting read. You actually convinced me to turn pingbacks on so I get notified at the very least.
I’m not sure that I will publish them. We shall see.
Great post.
Back when I got hooked on CommentLuv, it was a free plugin few people knew about 🙂 . I haven’t watched the sales video myself, but take your word for it. By the way, it’s still available as a free (light version) plugin.
So now you’ll hopefully know when I link to you without me hunting you down; good to know.
That was part of the idea. In case people linked to me and I didn’t realize.
I know that Commentluv has a light version, but I haven’t bought it.
Perhaps in the future.
I believe their light version is free; just look it up in the plugin depository.
Yes, I meant “got” not “bought”
That’s what I get for commenting early in the morning.
Great and Informative post Ana,
I have always had trackbacks/pingbacks enabled on all my blogs even though I usually get some spammy trackbacks once a while.
Trackbacks is cool, it enables me to know sites that link to me so that i can say hi to the blog owner. Commentluv is really working well to help keep spam low, am glad i have that plugin 😉
Thanks for the informative post!
You are very welcome, Joseph – seems like you are doing all the same things on your blog as I do here and they are working just as well.
Hey Ana!
Appreciate this post! I found myself walking through the “instructions” and making sure that I had my trackbacks enabled on my blog. You definitely gave a very comprehensive guide to anyone look to understand more about this topic.
I usually publish trackbacks that are internally linked. I have yet to receive from any other sites, but I might publish them (despite depleting the strength of the link). Spam links are not that common for me, most likely because I’m using both GASP and the commentluv plugin.
Thanks for sharing this wealth of information. It would definitely help a lot of people who want to learn more about blogging – Probably one of the more untouched topics out there!
Regards,
Darren Spruyt
As I mentioned in the post, blogs that do publish trackbacks from other blogs rock – they give us all even more incentive to link to them. Hopefully, the same will be true for your blog, Darren.
Hi Ana,
I have been blogging myself for a while now using the WordPress platform but I’ve never thought of using Pingback or Trackback… After reading your post I think I’ll try them, but I too wouldn’t publish them on my blog, for fear of having them listed as reciprocal links… Thank for this really useful post!
You are very welcome, David.
As I mentioned in the post, the point of publishing trackbacks is debatable – many SEO blogs do publish them, which might mean my logic is faulty. However, since what sites we link out to is that important and there are just way too many low-quality spammy ones, it’s just easier not to at all.
If you’re creating reciprocating links to a site with higher PageRank (PR) than your page, that should *help* your SEO. You can prove that to yourself by doing the math. Below is an excellent technical article (computer scientist level) that mathematically discusses the PR calculations. But honestly, if you had one year of algebra and understand functional notation (2 yrs of college math like most science majors have), you should be able to follow it just fine. http://pr.efactory.de/
By the way, “Page” in PageRank stands for Larry Page (co-founder of Google) and his master’s thesis.
I’m going to side with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web-spam group, and say there’s nothing wrong with internal linking; websites do this all the time. Now if you’re doing the PR math, you might say that internal linking will increase the PR of your deeper pages at the “expense” (they loose some PR) of your portal pages that the search engines care about. Well, the math doesn’t lie, but is that really a serious problem? The only time it’s a real problem is if you have a deeply linked page you don’t want the search engines finding. In that case, use your robots.txt file to keep the googlebot out.
Finally, remember PR (and authority) is a small factor in where you rank on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Relevance (terminology) and locale are much more important.
Thanks for the post. I learned a great deal.
Of course, I am all for internal linking and linking out, Mark; just not with trackbacks.
Glad to hear you learned something nonetheless.
Thanks for your tutorials for WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks. I really appreciate you for those kind of important tutorials for Search engine optimization.
Thank You!
Mohamed Shajid
BuildResponse
You are welcome, Mohamed.
Hey Ana,
Thanks for using me as an example and explaining all about trackbacks and pingbacks. You just saved me a heck of a lot of time. This will be a great post for me to send my readers as a reference so I appreciate that.
I use to have them turned off through WordPress but of course I received so many spammy ones that I discontinued that. I never thought to turn it back on after getting CommentLuv Premium but I should have tested it. Right now I check the Google Analytics trackbacks although it’s not daily.
This is a great reminder to me to give it another go so thank you for this post and for letting me know about it as well. You did a fabulous job with this one so let me thank you ahead of time.
I appreciate you letting me use your friendly face, Adrienne. 🙂
I do realize that there are plenty of other ways to track mentions; however, there’s a big difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it, of course. I like getting trackbacks because they are in my face and because I haven’t found one tool that does a thorough job at keeping up with mentions; I always find it that I have to check several sites to collect them.
Hi Ana and thank you for this. I always thought Trackbacks and Pingbacks were bad, spammy things. After reading your post, now I understand a little better about them. I had not allowed them on either one of blogs, possibly a bad thing cause I didn’t know if someone was linking back to my posts or not. I’ve corrected my settings and will see how it goes. Thanks again!
I would definitely recommend you set up alerts for your name, your blog names, or any brand names you have, Bren – it’s really important for your overall online presence to know who’s talking about you (whether you get a trackback or not).
And you are very welcome!
I felt the same way! This was an awesome post. I had honestly just thought those things were some sort of weird spam too and I’ve been blogging for years. Just goes to show that there is always, always more to learn.
Learning never stops, but then again, that’s what makes it interesting!