Comments on: Does Anyone Use Trackbacks Anymore?

By: JimAtJaxtr

JimAtJaxtr — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:19:29 +0000

I’m definitely a fan of the trackback, but as some people have mentioned, it’s kind of a pain to hunt down who does and does not accept them. The link value was just too much opportunity for spammers I guess, and subsequently, it kind of ruined the system. I’ve seen the wordpress pingback stuff, and it’d be nice if there was something even more robust as perhaps a suggestion tool of some kind.

By: Samantha Orwell

Samantha Orwell — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:44:55 +0000

i do.
i like it.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:37:00 +0000

No one uses trackbacks anymore? News to me.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:01:25 +0000

As has been noted above several times, Wordpress automates pingbacks between Wordpress blogs and you have to manually do trackbacks to other sites (eg ReadWriteWeb which is Movable Type). Of course, you know all this given that this is a Wordpress-based site anyway

I get a lot of trackback spam, but Akismet picks all of it up. I quite like getting legitmate trackbacks just for the warm fuzzies of someone else liked what I wrote enough to link back to it.

What’s interesting is some sites seem to turn trackbacks off for old posts which means if you don’t link while it’s fresh, it won’t show up. I guess it’s a spam management issue for the bigger, higher-traffic sites.

To make a short answer way too long, yes I use trackbacks but I can see why others don’t. The spam really can be unpleasant and high traffic sites must get a hell of a lot of it, judging by the volume my low traffic site gets.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:10:33 +0000

>if major platforms like Wordpress started automating them.

See above about pingbacks… Wordpress is already doing exactly that. Not sure about other platforms.

By: Eric Martindale

Eric Martindale — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:10:56 +0000

Mark, I think trackbacks are valuable, and they can be even more so if major platforms like Wordpress started automating them.

“Hey, this post contains a link! Let’s check that destination for a trackback notifier… sure enough! Let’s send a trackback to link these two posts.”

It’s already tough enough at times to generate content and find the right links for your blog posts, so most authors don’t want to go through the trouble of finding the trackback links for things they link to. We should be making the online discussion easier, not harder.

It would be great if more platforms supported trackbacks, too - not just so called “blogging” software. As we speak, I’m writing a trackback feature into a forum - and hey, isn’t that what this is all about, social interaction? I don’t believe forums, blogs, discussion groups, or chats are all that different - they all perpetuate our online communication.

It’s just a matter of making sure all that information gets linked and connected in the right ways.

By: Steve Olson

Steve Olson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:27:26 +0000

I get trackbacks/pingbacks, but not nearly as frequently as I did a couple of years ago. SPAM is a menace that makes us all cynical and ruins community. Death to spammers.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:11:32 +0000

I continue to use them and even display inbound Trackbacks inline under posts. It’s not that hard to control spam, using Akismet and other plugins.

The main defect, really, is that it’s a very partial and selective list. Plus, WordPress introduced the competing and poorly formatted PingBack to dilute the field.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:52:56 +0000

Wordpress also uses pingback - same as trackback only you don’t have to do anything, kinda wordpress blogs talking between themselves.

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:47:55 +0000

Louis,

You make a great point about how effective trackbacks can be to attract attention. I know, for example, that when I use a trackback to credit a TechCrunch story, my blog gets lots of traffic - probably because the trackbacks appear before the comments on the TechCrunch post.