Comments on: Trackback etiquette and trackback spam

By: Rhymes With Right

Rhymes With Right — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 04:09:26 +0000

Blogging Tips…

I got into a discussion tonight with some folks on a mailing list. It began about drops in traffic over Memorial Day — which most of us had. The one paarticipant posted the following somewhat discouraged comment. OK, if next……

By: Eric Wabant

Eric Wabant — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 23:34:49 +0000

Hi IO ERROR,

I was looking around your site and found this thread. So if I understand well (the wiki and codex states lots of things , possibly to many in one shot…) If I add your site to my blogrole I should ping you and if I read an article that interest me and could interest my visitors, I should take an exerpt and trackback to you ? Another really stu.. question: where are the pingback and trackback butons, are those the check boxes on the make a post page? If the proper procedure is to past an excerpt to create the post can one point to a comment in the same way?

Regards,
Eric

By: Marco

Marco — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:30:49 +0000

I find your ‘policy’ rather strange. Sending a trackback, in my opinion, means you’ve blogged something that’s related to a posting you’re sending a trackback to. This adds something nice and relevant to the original posting and notifies the original poster and the readers of this posting about this very fact. Because of this I often find interesting side information when reading other people’s blogs. Quite often there are trackbacks below the posting with other interesting material.

I was almost going to send you a trackback about something rather relevant I posted about it but I guess I won’t know because you’d consider it to be spam…

*boggles*

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:38:13 +0000

Jack, thanks for your response. I’m sorry I had to go and blog about this, and I’ve removed the nofollow link for your page and released your trackback from moderation. Hopefully you’ll get a few more cents out of the traffic, and some Google juice, for whatever it’s worth.

By: John Doyle (call me Jack, please)

John Doyle (call me Jack, please) — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:38:26 +0000

Nevermind, I found the article you are referring to, and I have linked back to you, twice as a matter of fact.

By: John Doyle (call me Jack, please)

John Doyle (call me Jack, please) — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:32:51 +0000

I’m very sorry that I didn’t respond to your message as you had expected. Frankly, I just figured you’d go ahead and delete the trackback and be done with it. I certainly would have responded to you had I realized that you even cared about a response.

Hell, man, I have no problem linking to your site from mine. I’m really not out to make any money off of my blog anyways. I only added the google ads on Friday just for the heck of it. I’ve made $0.73 so far, and I’m shocked. I figured I wouldn’t make that in a year. But hey, it’s money.

Anyways, I was a radio personality for a long time, and I have always felt that no publicity is bad publicity. I had no idea that you had posted my name on your blog with a link back to my site. It was totally by accident that I found it… and I appreciate the traffic that you have generated for me.

Anyways, again, I’m sorry that my response to your comment (deleting it) wasn’t what you had expected. I’d be more than happy to link back to you if you could remind me which post it is I had even sent you a trackback for. To be honest, I don’t even remember.

Again, thanks for the traffic… it’s more than I had envisioned. (did I spell that right?)

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 12:13:11 +0000

It's easy for reasonable people to disagree on the appropriate use of trackback. This disagreement, in part, led to pingback, which is quite explicit about the linking notification, where trackback is not clear about it. By the way, I am an asshole. And this is my policy on trackback. Unfortunately I get far too much spam here to deal with them any other way. You are welcome, of course, to not send trackbacks here if you choose.

By: James

James — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:26:34 +0000

So you apparently think you have a right to a link from this guy’s blog? As others have pointed out, that’s not what Trackback is for. Of course, you have a right to try and shame him here on your blog, but there are a couple reasons why you should re-think this:

1. You’re calling him a “spammer”, which isn’t true. He’s someone who’s using Trackback for its intended purpose (notifying blog readers of related or on-topic content at another blog). The fact that you think anyone who sends a Trackback ping ought to be obligated to link to your site doesn’t make it so.

2. Honestly, it makes you look like an asshole.

By: MacManX.com » Blogroll Dive: 7/18/05

MacManX.com » Blogroll Dive: 7/18/05 — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:07:38 +0000

[...] Owen discusses the new user permission system in WordPress v1.6. Michael Heilemann discovers that Plan 9 From Outer Space has entered the public domain. Khaled becomes a member of the 9Rules Network. Michael Hampton ruminates on trackback etiquette and trackback spam. Jon revisits PHP Nuke. Craig discovers a clever Flickr PHP script. Sarah discusses Einstein the Violinist. Angsuman receives an inside tip on the work culture at Google. Tom offers some advice on what not to do when blogging for business. And, Podz updates some of his WordPress guides. [...]

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 05:19:02 +0000

Okay, I hope I’ve done this correctly. I’ve made a page that lists all my plugins, including yours. (See: http://searchportal.information.com/?o_id=158480&domainname=cellojaren.nl. And I don’t write this comment to generate more traffic, because most of the readers of this page won’t even be able to understand what I wrote because of the language.