Are Pingbacks Potential Spam - Should I Approve Them

I want to know too - and there ARE no dumb questions.

I'm no expert by any means, but a pingback is just a notification that someone has linked to one of your posts/articles.

I get what I consider to be quite a lot of pingback spam. These seem to come from places just looking to get a backlink for themselves. Many are automated and from locations that I do not feel are desirable to link to. They are deleted.

Others come from legitimate sites and are usually approved, especially if they are related to my blogs content.

Hopefully, a quick and helpful description.

A lot of blogs have pingbacks turned-off and some that don't
have pingbacks that don't work. Pingback is a really cool feature
that was damaged by spammers a few years back. Additionally,
a lot of people don't understand it so many bloggers don't have
it turned on.

When you get a pingback comment on your blog, it's supposed
to mean somebody has referenced your post, which is a cool thing,
right?

In a world where bloggers care about delivering good content
pingbacks are a a way to share the love. Unfortunately,
owners of crap blogs will also use pingbacks to try to get
your good blog to link to their crap blog.

So - the verdict is (imo) pingbacks are cool if you're getting
them from bloggers who care. If you're getting them from
crap bloggers, delete 'em.

If you look at your WP dashboard, there is a setting where you can "attempt to notify other blogs that you have linked to them." I believe that is what produces the pings you are speaking of. I usually get them when someone publishes one of my articles from EZA on their blog. The author credit link in the post triggers the WP platform of the blog that is posting the article to ping my blog and let me know that the article has been posted.

There are several things you can do with the pings. You can simply delete them, you can follow the links to see where your article was posted at, or you can plug the link into something like Yahoo site explorer and find all of the backlink sources that site has used, and then delete the ping.

I never approve pings, I will sometimes allow them to build up in my queue until I have enough to be worth investigating, but generally I just delete them. Pings are a good thing and it means your articles are interesting and valuable to other people.

Steve

I allow legit ones, but the pingback/trackback, I deny if obvious spam; follow the link to THEIR blog, insult their mother and leave link to one of my money sites that spawns 2x windows with each exit attempt... Buahahaha