So What The Hell Is A Pingback and What Should You Do About Them?

byPaulOsborne

832 followers

11 years ago

Sometimes, you will get an alert in WordPress telling you that you have a new pingback, this appears in the comments section, and you will need to moderate exactly as you would any other comment.

So Firstly Lets Understand What A Pingback Is...

A pingback occurs when a post you have added to your own website or blog, is linked to from another WordPress post. This could be from somebody else's website, or it could also be from a post on your own site.

Let Me Explain....

I write a post on my website titled 'A Review Of Wealthy Affiliate'

My creative juices are flowing, so I then write a second post titled 'How To Make Money Online'

Following good SEO guidelines on internal linking, I include a link back to my post 'A Review of Wealthy Affiliate'

As I have created a link to my original post, WordPress calls this a pingback. and alerts me in my comments section.

Exactly the same happens, if another WordPress user creates a link back to your post, within their own post.

Again WordPress will send you a notification via email, and also in your dashboard within the comments section. This will advise you where the link is, so you can check it out.

(Please note that pingbacks can only occur on WordPress, and also if both users, have pingbacks enabled in settings.)

Through experience, I find that most of the pingbacks that I receive are either from my own site, or from spammers, trying to get a free link back to their own content.

So What Should You Do About Them?

My advice is that you should disable Pingbacks altogether, unless you like doing some extra moderation, everytime you link to your internal pages.

And if another WordPress user, want to link to your site, the link will still remain, you will just not be notified!

So Heres How To Disable Pingbacks

From the WordPress dashboard go to

Settings > Discussions

Uncheck the box 'Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)'

That's all there is to it, and you now have one less thing to worry about

Hope that helps!

Paul