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Comments » Pingbacks

A pingback is a type of comment that’s created when you link to another blog post where pingbacks are enabled. The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

  • Person A posts something on his blog.
  • Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
  • Person A’s blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.

Check out the WordPress.org Introduction to Blogging article for a more detailed explanation.

To create a pingback, just link to another WordPress blog post. (Click here for more information on adding links to your posts.) If that post has pingbacks enabled, the blog owner will see a pingback appear in their comments section that they can approve.

Comments are styled differently for each theme. Here is an example of how a pingback appears on our own WordPress.com blog post about Twitter:

pingback-example

Can I stop self-pings?

Yes.

Self-pings (pings within your own blog) are found useful by some, annoying by others. Those who find them useful feel that if someone finds the old post that they will see the link to the new post. But some still disagree.

Normally when you create a link, the entire URL including http:// is used. That will cause a self-ping.

To prevent self-pings, shorten the URL from this:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/twitter-widget

to this:

/2009/03/26/twitter-widget

Note: The visual editor may add the domain information back into the link. To check that, you must switch to the HTML editor and make sure the link is displayed correctly in the href attribute for the link before publishing. Also, the relative link structure suggested above only works within the blog itself. The links will be invalid when used outside of the blog, like in subscription emails.

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How do I send out update pings?

Many services like Technorati, Feedster, Icerocket, Google Blog Search, and others want a “ping” from you to know you’ve updated so they can index your content. WordPress.com handles it all for you. When you post, we send a ping using Ping-o-Matic! which is a service that pings several different search providers all at once including Technorati, My Yahoo!, Google Blog Search.

Pings are automatically sent if you have selected to make your blog visible to everyone on the Settings > Privacy page. If your blog is private or if you block search engines, pings will not be sent.

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Disabling Pingbacks

You can easily disable pingbacks on individual posts via the Discussion module on your Add New or Edit Post page:

If you don’t see the Discussion module, please make sure that it’s enabled in your Screen Options.

Still confused?

Contact support.