Comments »Pingbacks

A pingback is a special type of comment that’s created when you link to another blog post, as long as the other blog is set to accept pingbacks.

1. How to create a pingback
2. An example of a pingback
3. How to disable pingbacks
4. How to stop self-pings only
5. How to send out update pings

How to create a pingback

To create a pingback, simply create a link (i.e. clickable text) to another WordPress blog post from within a blog post or a page on your own site. If that post has pingbacks enabled, the blog owner will see a pingback appear in their comments section.

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An example of a pingback

Think of a pingback as an automated comment. Here is an example:

• Let’s say you write a post titled “Great Post” and publish it.
• One of your readers, who also has a website, really liked your “Great Post” and wanted to write their own post and link back to “Great Post”.
• When they place a link back to “Great Post” on their own website, you get a notification.
• This notification is the “pingback”. The pingback tells you and other website visitors: “Hey! Someone put a link to your post on their website”.

This notification then displays a special type of comment linking to their post. Pingbacks appear mixed in with any other comments on the post:

The example above is from a blog using the Ryu theme. Comments are styled differently for each theme, so pingbacks on your blog won’t necessarily look like the image above.

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How to disable pingbacks

To disable pingbacks on every post you publish, go to Manage → Settings → Discussion and toggle off the option “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).”

You can also disable pingbacks on individual posts by checking under Discussion in the post’s settings.

Disabling pingbacks will prevent the pingback from showing in your comments section. It doesn’t prevent people from linking to your posts.

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How to stop self-pings only

Self-pings (pingbacks that happen when you link to your own blog posts) are useful to some, annoying to others. If you’d prefer, you can stop your blog from pinging itself by using a shortened version of your URL for the link.

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

To prevent self-pings, remove the domain from the link, keeping only the slug, i.e. the part of the URL that comes after the “.com.” 

So instead of this:

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

use only this:

/2009/03/26/twitter-widget

The editor may add the full domain address back into the link. To check, switch to the HTML version 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 to send out update pings

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

Pings are automatically sent if you have a public blog. If your blog is private or if you block search engines, pings will not be sent.

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