Pingback and trackback are link notifications that enable you to keep track of when other sites link to your content. When these notifications are enabled, they appear in the comments section of your posts.
Although pingbacks and trackbacks facilitate communcation between blogs, they can also be abused by bots that insert spam links on your site. Therefore, you should normally disable pingbacks and trackbacks, and only enable them if you are sure you want to use them.
For instance, if another WordPress site links or references your article, you will get a pingback notification that will display as a comment on the blog post they linked to.
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WordPress describes them as a form of ‘automated comments’. Think of it like this:
- Person A publishes a post.
- Person B publishes her own post, including a link to Person A’s post.
- WordPress.com automatically sends a pingback to Person A’s post, letting Person A know that someone has linked to them.
- Person A’s post then displays a special type of comment linking to Person B’s post. Pingbacks appear mixed in with any other comments on the post.
To enable or disable pingbacks and trackbacks, follow these steps:
- Log in to WordPress as the administrator.
- In the left pane of the dashboard, click Settings, and then click Discussion.
- In the Default article settings section:
- To enable pingbacks and trackbacks, select the Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) check box.
- To disable pingbacks and trackbacks, clear the Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) check box.
- Click Save Changes.
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Are Pingbacks Good for Your Blog’s SEO?
Since they are created by having external links on another person’s blog, they are directly related to your SEO. So yes, pingbacks are good for your blog’s SEO.
One caution regarding pingbacks is that spammers can abuse them, just like the spam comments. Low-quality pingbacks could eventually hurt the integrity of your blog, so we recommend setting up notifications for pingbacks that will enable you to approve or deny each request.