When you publish a new blog post on your Wordpress blog, it automatically "pings" an update notification service called Pingomatic.com which in turn notifies various search engines that there's some exciting new content on your blog.

There is a field on the Settings - Writing page where you can add or delete pinging services (see screenshot, below). But how many Wordpress ping services do you really need?

A few years ago "savvy" Wordpress bloggers used to pop over to the Wordpress Codex page that dealt with pinging, copy the pinging services that were listed there, then paste them into the Update Services field, click the Save Changes button, and bingo!

Every new blog post (or update) would be pinged to multiple pinging services, which would update a whole host of search engines and... and...

And, well, apparently, that would have a major effect on your site exposure, lead to a ton of traffic, sales, and the wealth of Croesus would be yours!

Then people began to worry that every time they updated or tweaked a blog post (like, dozens of times per post if you're like me) all the pingers would be pinging like crazy and the search engines would start smelling a rat and drop their over-pinging blogs down the rankings drain.

That was a few years ago now. But what about the situation today? Apart from Pingomatic, how many Wordpress ping services do we really need?

I think the answer is zero. And certainly NOT the list copied and pasted from the old codex page, which hasn't been updated for years, it seems. Here is the state of play with the list supplied by codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services as of January 2018:

And here's another thing, which I picked up from Ana Hoffman of TrafficGenerationCafe.com today. The Wordpress Codex page says:

"Blogrolling scripts like blogrolling . com and WordPress check update services to see if you’ve updated and then shows it on everyone’s site — usually by moving you to the top of people’s blogrolling list or putting a recently updated indicator by your link."

But blogrolling . com no longer exists! And, as Ana rhetorically asks, "when was the last time you saw a blogroll displayed on anyone’s site?"

(Source: https://trafficgenerationcafe.... )

Blogrolls are dead.

The function of pings is to get search engine bots to crawl your site. But, according to Ana's research into other researchers (!), posting a Google site map on your site, and posting on social media (where the search engine bots will also find your stuff) are more effective.

So, apart From Pingomatic, which is owned by Wordpress, you do not need any other pinging services for your blog posts.

If you pasted a massive list of pinging services into your Update Services field, as I had, half of them are probably dead by now, so just delete them all except for Pingomatic.

And if you have never touched your Update Services field, the great news is that you don't have to worry about it! Just focus on creating valuable, relevant and engaging content for your target niche market. :)

David Hurley

#InspiredFocus