When someone links to one of your blog posts in their blog, they create a trackback. Trackbacks let you see who is linking to your blog posts.

• Before You Start: You have a business blog. You understand how to administer the blog comments features of your blogging software.
• Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
• Article Last Updated: Monday, August 22, 2011

What Are Trackbacks?

You have a blog. You write a great blog post that stirs up a lot of conversation. Many of the people who visit your site leave their opinions as comments to your blog post. But a few people actually write a response to your blog post as a blog post on their own site. They link to your blog post so people reading their blog will understand why they are writing this blog post.

The link from that other blog post to your blog post is a trackback.

Any time that you link to someone else’s blog post, you create a trackback to that blog post. Every time someone else links to one of your blog posts, its a trackback to your blog post. In general, it’s considered good manners to link to other people’s blog posts and give them credit for their work. It also helps your blog audience find other good blogs that might interest them.

Trackbacks are actually just one way that blogs communicate between each other. The distinctions between the types are technical, and the term “trackback” is commonly used to refer to all three types of linkbacks.

Trackbacks Vs. Comments

In one sense, a trackback is a type of comment. Most blogging software (the major exception is Blogger) automatically handles trackbacks as a sort of comment to your blog post. Trackbacks get counted as a comment, and you can usually configure your blogging software to display a list of your trackbacks with your comments.

Trackbacks And Spam

When you publish trackbacks on your blog post, you provide a link to the other blog post. Spammer who want to get higher search engine results for their own websites often create bogus links to legitimate blog posts so they get trackbacks on real blogs pointing to their spammy sites. They do this because incoming links (links from other sites, in this case, your blog) help boost the spammer site’s search engine ranking.

You can watch the trackbacks that appear for your blog posts and delete the ones that come from spammers. These trackbacks don’t contribute to the conversation on your site. While they are annoying, they really don’t cause any harm.

WordPress And Trackbacks

WordPress blogs have two options related to trackbacks in Settings > Discussion.

• Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting). This option creates a trackback for every blog post you link to in your posts.
• Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This option accepts trackbacks from other blog posts that link to your blog posts.

These setting are global and apply by default to each blog post you write. However, you can override these options for individual blog posts if necessary. WordPress allows you to work with trackbacks using the same features you use to moderate comments.

Your turn: Do you have trackbacks for any blog posts? How does your blogging software manage them? Have you had trackback spam? Share your experience.

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