KirstenL4W

Jan 29 2008

Ping!

Something that is a new experience for me since moving to Wordpress is pingbacks and trackbacks. For those who don’t know, these are, to the best of my knowledge, links to your content on another website. I’m not talking about blogrolls - no, this is when your work is quoted, in part or in full, on another website and links back to your site, which is how it gets picked up in your comments as a trackback.

My Music on Mondays posts seem to be the most popular posts for this. Yesterday I checked my comments to see 3 of these, my highest number yet. I’m sure they will spiral out of control as I get more and more popular. Check this out:

Now, I always check these out, just to make sure that at the very least there is a link in there and I don’t have to bitch-slap anyone. But what I don’t get is the name. It’s always different. See those bottom two? Despite the URL, they are the exact same website, yet on one I am “The Gossip Girls” and on another I am “Barbara”. I don’t get that. I mean, I can see how the first one is a trick to get more people to the site with the name of a tv show, but Barbara? Not sure about that one. In all cases, though, the links to go my site.Right now this is a slight annoyance and also somewhat amusing, but at least (to my knowledge) no one has copied my site. Sites like Copyscape can help you figure out if someone has.

Other Posts Like Me:

• Getting Social
• Button Fever!
• Step Away from Blogger
• Keeping Track
• On The Internet #4

Make Me Popular:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

7 Comments to “Ping!”

1. # Jordon (10 comments.)on 29 Jan 2008 at 9:41 am

   They’re all spam. I had trackbacks and pingbacks enabled for over a year and a half, and I only ever got two legitimate ones and tons of spam like the ones you’re getting. Finally, I turned them off, and no one noticed.

2. # Kirstenon 29 Jan 2008 at 1:33 pm

   I don’t think I even noticed that it was possible to turn these off. How do you do that?

3. # Jordon (10 comments.)on 29 Jan 2008 at 2:01 pm

   Go to Options -> Discussion and uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

4. # Katie (6 comments.)on 29 Jan 2008 at 5:26 pm

   I leave trackbacks and pingbacks on because when I host weekend cat blogging, it’s a good way to see if I’ve missed adding anyone to the round up (because they link back to my blog). But those in your list are definitely spam. I don’t see a lot of spam via trackbacks or pingbacks because akismet generally deletes them before I even have to see them.

   To turn them off, go “Options” then “Discussion” and untick the box next to “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)”. I believe that will do the trick.

5. # Kirstenon 29 Jan 2008 at 9:21 pm

   Thanks Jordon and Katie. I don’t get all that much of it, and since I moderate comments, I’ll leave it on for now and keep it in the back of my mind if it gets out of hand.

6. # Kevin (4 comments.)on 29 Jan 2008 at 9:45 pm

   I’ve had some spam ones and some legit ones as well. I leave mine on so that I can see the legit ones and I just delete the spam. Thanks for sharing by the way. :)

7. # Kirstenon 29 Jan 2008 at 11:26 pm

   Kevin, that’s what I’m thinking - I’ll just leave it on until that point in time when I am so popular that I am inundated with so many pingbacks and trackbacks that it takes away from the time I spend on legitimate comments.

Talk to Me

I love getting comments, but due to the amount of spam I get, I have to moderate all comments.