Pingbacks

When is a Pingback considered SPAM?

[shallow]

I'm new to using WordPress and need help in understanding Pingbacks.

What is a Pingback and are there desirable and undesirable ones?

Some Pingbacks seem Spammy....but I may be wrong due to my lack of understanding of them.

The "names" posted at my site are actually links to a product at another site. You click on the link and you're brought to a page, say a long review, which contains a minor link back to my site.

Back to my site: the Pingback title/link is almost double in length of the link to my actual article where the Pingback is posted.

Is this the way it's supposed to be, or should I consider it SPAM?

Hope I'm explaining myself correctly.

Thanks.

[ergophobe]

A pingback is when someone links to your blog from another blog platform that "pings" and says essentially "I linked to your article". Wordpress then decides based on your setting whether or not to treat that as a comment (more or less) and list it somewhere below the post.

In theory, it foster community and lets people follow the discussion around the web. In theory, it's great because you write something incredibly interesting, but you miss some points and now I have some incredibly interesting additions that your reader won't want to miss.

In practice, most pingbacks come from

- people who couldn't think of what to write today and a say "Shallow had a [u]great post today[/u] and it's just useless

- people who, as you suspect, are trolling for links and are using "blog and ping" promotion, i.e. spam.

What you want to do is up to you. I allow pingbacks, but I freely delete ones I don't think add value. If I were getting a lot of garbage pingbacks, I would just turn them off.

[shallow]

ergophobe, thanks for the info. I'm getting a healthy does of all three scenarios, but the positive comments outweigh the negatives. So I'm sticking with it. :)

[ergophobe]

Yep, you just have to balance benefit/hassle and go with what you like. If you don't like, just delete it.

On the other hand, if you do like it, it gives you a chance to stop by the other person's site and leave a comment or drop and note and possibly build a connection to a like-minded person, respond to a critic or whatever floats your boat.

[Ozymandias]

I'm in the same boat as you, and filter them on a case by case basis.

I will visit the site the pingback is coming from, if I think it adds value to my visitors I will allow it. If I don't want that website to be associated with mine (after all, a link on your website is sort of a recommendation) I won't include it.

[shallow]

Forgive my ignorance, but why would someone post a comment and add a URL with "nofollow" in it? Most of these seem to be SPAM yet other SPAM posts don't include "nofollow."

thanks.

[BradleyT]

Perhaps just to see if you allow comments, allow links to "low quality" sites, auto-approve, etc...