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1. lmighton
   Member
   Aug 6, 2006, 9:48 PM

   Hi there,
   I'm still fuzzy about pingbacks.
   If I'm just lah-dee-dah writing a post, and I have links within it to other people's blogs relevant to my topic, do those bloggers automatically receive an email that says 'hey, Lisa wrote about you, check this out'? And if so, is that called a pingback or a trackback?
   Next question, I just received an email that looks like this:

   "New pingback on your post #39 "Corporate toes dip in the waters of social media"
   Website: (blogger's name here) links for 2006-08-06 (blogger's IP here, URI {??} here, http here), Excerpt (from what they wrote:)(tags: blogging vancity credit_union changeeverything blogger_relations pr) [...] [...] "

   That's the first one of these I've received. Did they specifically 'ask' for me to be pinged?
   pinged? And if so, why do they do that instead of just writing and linking?

   I did search forums, but couldn't find an answer.

   Thanks
   Confused Lisa

2. drmike
   Member
   Aug 6, 2006, 10:00 PM

   do those bloggers automatically receive an email that says 'hey, Lisa wrote about you, check this out'?

   Yes, if you have your blog set to send those notifications. You yourself can set this at Dashboard -> Options -> Discussion -> "Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article"

   If you don't want other blogs to notify you, then it's the next line down under that one.

   And if so, is that called a pingback or a trackback?

   I call them both pings. Never could figure out which was which.

   Did they specifically 'ask' for me to be pinged?

   WordPress is telling you that someone has linked to one of your articles. You can't control who links to you. If you look at the article on your blog in question, you should see a comment showing the ping to your site. if you don't want it there, just delete it.

   Hope this helps,
   -drmike

3. lmighton
   Member
   Aug 7, 2006, 3:00 AM

   That's pretty great that your software does both sides of that without me having to do anything.
   Thanks, that helps a lot.

4. sarigordon
   Member
   Aug 11, 2006, 8:45 PM

   Thanks for a well-written question and a helpful response you guys!

   Sari

5. sunburntkamel
   Member
   Aug 11, 2006, 9:05 PM

   FWIW, a trackback is only generated when you put the trackback address of another post in the trackback field of the Write page in your dashboard. it is not dependent on having a link in your post. this makes it a common means of blog spam.

   pingbacks are only generated by putting a link in your post. unfortunately, most blog software (myspace, livejournal, MT, etc) doesn't have a means of handling pingbacks, so they often go unnoticed by non-wordpress bloggers.

6. timethief
   Member
   Aug 11, 2006, 10:31 PM

   @sunburntkamel
   It was worth a lot in terms of clarity so thanks for chiming in.

7. cornell
   Member
   Aug 12, 2006, 8:03 AM

   Kamel - thanks for the info!

   I think in the future if I'm linking to those non-wordpress services I'll use the trackback instead of just pingbacks.

   THIS is why WP ROCKS!

   :o)

8. lmighton
   Member
   Aug 12, 2006, 6:40 PM

   Cool. I like it when everyone chips in to help & this collective information is created! Lisa

9. timothyfoster
   Member
   Aug 12, 2006, 6:57 PM

   Thanks all - I needed this too! Thanks again for the info,

   TF

10. timethief
    Member
    Aug 12, 2006, 8:43 PM

    Podz,
    I'm wondering if this deserves mention in the FAQs. What do you think?

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