Trackback on WordPress

7 replies
Hi,

Please could someone explain this to me? I just received notification from my blog that someone added a trackback to my site and it needs to be approved. When I click on the url that is requesting the trackback it gives me an error and says it cannot find the site.

I have never had one of these before and I am a tad confused :confused: and I am also not clear what a trackback is.

Di
#trackback #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author rob1123
    As I understand trackbacks, another website has linked to your site, and in doing this a ping was sent to you blog to let you know about it.

    Basically just a backlink
    Signature

    derp.

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  • Profile picture of the author wayne60618
    There are trackbacks which are legit and there are trackback that are spam. People use tools like Scrapebox to spam blogs that allow trackbacks. Whenever you get a trackback, go to the site and check it out. If it looks like a site that you would endorse, then allow it. If it doesn't, delete it. Linking out to bad properties can negatively effect your rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author jt808
    A trackback is when someone links to your website from their website. If the is no website at the other end it is probably just spam and should be deleted.

    I hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author cyrilchua
    Brutally honest here. Trackbacks are usually set to auto approve on most wordpress sites. Makes them vulnerable to spam. Though it may have a link to you if the trackback was a real one, not one from scrapebox, by approving it, your trackback is a link to the other guy's site as well. If you're not careful, you may link out to bad content.

    If it was me, I would simply disable trackback. Provides no necessary seo value.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      A trackback's a special kind of reciprocal backlink. One shouldn't approve them without clicking through to the site of origin and checking it out. They can also be faked, though, and if you've tried that and it didn't check out, you should just delete and ignore it.
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  • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
    Yeah, what you're seeing is more or less an evolution in backlink spamming techniques. Seems to be increasing in popularity these days because so many webmasters now have their guard up about scrutinising comments (and a whole lot of assistive tools, plugins, etc, that are really effective) but don't think to look as closely at trackbacks, especially if they receive many of them daily.

    I accept trackbacks simply because I still want to see who's linking to me (legitimate cases, anyway), but I don't publish them because I don't think it's of anyone else's business. If I wanted a feeling of great self-importance, I'd have become a famous rock god.

    (I am a rock god, just not famed for it! )

    (And hot damn, it looks like Alexa just achieved brevity!! ^ )
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