Are Trackbacks and Pingbacks a good thing

As I understand it, trackbacks and pingbacks are similar in nature but use slightly different language to share information between blogs.

Trackbacks/pingbacks share information about links from one site to another site. If you write a post and include a link to a post written on another site and trackbacks/pingbacks are enabled, WP will automatically send a comment to the post of the other site with a link to your site. The comment notifies the other site owner that you referenced their post. If they approve your trackback comment, it gives you a nice backlink and potentially some traffic from the other site.

The opposite happens, too. Other sites may include a link in one of their posts to a post on your site. If you both have trackbacks/pingbacks enabled, their WP will send a comment to your site letting you know that the other site linked to you. If you approve the trackback, it will show up as a comment under your post and include a link back to the other site. If you delete the trackback comment, it does not remove the hyperlink in the other site...it just means you decided not to allow the comment and link back to the other site to show up on your post.

I enable trackbacks/pingbacks on my sites, but I moderate all comments. A lot of sites can try to spam your own site with trackbacks to get backlinks on your site. I always look at the other site first to see if I want to approve the trackback comment or not. If it's a nice PR site with good content, I approve it. If it's not, I delete it.

If you write posts that reference posts on other sites that get lots of related traffic, you may want to enable trackbacks/pingbacks. If the other site likes what they see on your site, they may approve the comment and link and you get a little boost in traffic, if not PR.

Hope that helps!

They can give you a rash if you are alergic.

But generally they are rather harmless.