A trackback means that someone referred to your post from their own article. In content management systems much like WordPress, we have the ability to accept trackbacks as a method of reward to other bloggers that and these become backlinks.
Acceptable Trackbacks to Approve
I recently was asked over the phone about trackbacks and what are acceptable trackbacks to approve. Because of this call, I decided to put together a post in my Ask Nile series. I do want to caution that before I give my answer, you should be moderating your website, especially backlinks, comments, and trackbacks. Never approve a trackback right away unless you have investigating where the source is.
You don’t want to approve every single trackback. The ones you do want to approve are ones from unique and quality content from other reputable sites. Now, reputable doesn’t exactly mean that the site has to be an authority website, but it does mean that the blogger running it should be trustworthy, and have content that could add value to the article they linked to.
Trackbacks to Avoid
- Trackbacks that go to pages or articles that don’t have your link on them.
- Trackbacks that go to sites that don’t show up for some reason.
- Trackbacks to shortened URLs. If you must, click on the link to check out where it leads. From my own experience, I don’t even bother clicking and just delete the trackback.
- Trackbacks that lead to sites that seem like they are spam or not reputable.
These are all based off your own common sense. If you aren’t sure, then don’t approve it. It will help you down the road in case that site is blacklisted or eventually removed. Sites that tend to not follow some of Google’s guidelines don’t usually last that long since the site owner is probably not making oodles of money.
How do you deal with trackbacks? Do you delete them right away? Do you check them out and approve them? What was the strangest trackback you have ever received?
HI Nile. I actually still do not understand what a Track Back is Nile? I do understand that people leave comments and there fore have an opportunity to leave their link at the end of it Is this a track back? I am curious to find out. I do read and comment back on all comments that do come to through my site to make sure that these are real people and most the time I do click through and read their posts to.. Thanks for all you do Nile.. Chery 🙂
Hi Chery! This article might help explain trackbacks – http://blondish.net/pingbacks-and-trackbacks-using-them-successfully/
I think being cautious about which trackbacks you utilize is smart. Thanks for breaking down which ones are useful.
It is totally a new thing to me. I never heared about this thing before. So I am really curious to learn more about it. Would you like to explain more for me?
Hi John!
In content management systems much like WordPress, you can link back to or ping another person’s article or within your own website. It alerts the website owner that their article was linked to and the URL that linked to the article. Some people use this as a part of link building as well as helping to build a reputation and authority in their niche.
In another comment on above should be the link to my article on both Pingbacks and Trackbacks.
I personally manage a WordPress site, and I know you receive lot of trackbacks notifications. Accepting or approving all of them is not good at all, one should first verify the source and content so that it won’t affect your website negatively. Now a days Google has active animals and they won’t much time to bite your website.
I am agree with you that we should investigate the trackback source before approving. Thanks for sharing the Trackbacks to avoid tips. Please let me know if there is anymore thing I should be careful about before approving any trackbacks to my site. Thanks Nile 🙂
I mange my WordPress website myself. I personally believe that WordPress theme are very easy to handle and they come with so many plugins to get through.
Hi Mrs. Flores,
Good post. At least now I know something about trackbacks and I also have a little strategy to deal with it.
My first trackback was from Anna Hoffman. I wrote an article, created a link to one of her articles and published it.
A few days later she read the article, liked it and sent a trackback. I was so stupid I didn’t understood what that link was. I thought it is a kind of spam. So I deleted the trackback (!!!).
Then, after a while I understood and became green of sorrow and fury. What an opportunity wasted.
I told her what I’ve done. I imagine she had a good laugh. Then she asked me politely not to do it again, at least not with her trackbacks.
Unfortunately that trackback was lost forever.
Have a nice day
Actually, trackbacks are not always lost forever, you can definitely put the URL in your trackbacks and pingbacks under your article and it will alert her again of the trackback. It only ends up be a one-way backlink, but it is still good.
Hi nile..maybe we can be link exchanged partner. I donot understand about trackback. but I will try, maybe it like a link exchange?
A trackback is nothing like link exchanging. It is done between blogs when linked from an article on one site to a different site’s post.
Hey Thnxx for this post but i want to ask one thing.On my sites many trackbacks are coming from google.com .. what are they and how are they coming automatically.
I only approve trackbacks on other legal sites. I almost never get trackbacks from non-legal sites that aren’t spammy websites. No reason to approve those links.
hi thanks for this post one should first verify the source and content so that it won’t affect your website negatively.
Hey! This is very Important & impressive post, its very helpful to deeply understand about trackback link.
Hey This is such a great article man, Thanks for sharing. 😀
Hey this is something awesome, Thanks for sharing us.
great article. i think the best thing to do is to check whether the source is not trying to spam it and is a quality one. that will give you an edge and insight to approve it.
Receiving lots of track brackbacks these days, but most of them doesn’t worth getting connected to so I don’t approve, it’s a dilemma specially for new blogs because every link is important for a new site but it is dangerous too.
It definitely is a chore to go through moderating trackbacks as a lot of them are indeed spam. The only thing I can do as an experienced blogger is to make sure new bloggers are informed.
These spam trackbacks are literally make me disable trackbacks at the first place. Do you recommend and good plugin to fight trackback spam?
Trackbacks were a mystery to me for a long time, and at first I thought they were a form of spam. But then I noticed trackbacks showing up when I put a link to my own blog in my posts. I’ve always deleted them if I wasn’t sure. It’s good to know I was doing the best thing. 🙂
Willena
I had a spate of trackbacks, after being featured in the Sunday press, the sites which tracked back had nothing to do with the subject matter, appeared to be less than useful and so I deleted – but I did check them first!
I agree, one should first verify the source of trackback and content so that it won’t affect your blog negatively.
Thanks!
I sure am glad someone else is lost regarding trackbacks… thanks for posting the link to the article about trackbacks and pingbacks. Going to read it now :). This information helps a lot, but it will help a lot more once I know what the heck a trackback is lol.
Nile,
Love that list you made. It’s such a good reference. YOu def hit all the right notes. I get those stupid trackbacks all the time. Linking to sites that don’t exist, to pages that do NOT have my link on it!
If you have time could you please explain why sites do this? It makes no sense.
Sites that give me a shortened URL trackback are also stupid! Complete waste of time. You are right, click on a link if looks legit and see if the site is legit before approving.
Common Sense goes a long way to help here!
Thanks for another informative post!
~ Jupiter Jim
Link juice…. they are desperate or lazy…or both to get backlinks even if they use black hat methods….that’s the reason.
Nile, agree with your points on which trackbacks to avoid.
I’ve been getting a lot of them for Nike shoes, handbags and some other crazy stuff.
I generally don’t accept any trackbacks anymore and the only legit trackbacks seem to take so long to come through, I tend to stick to checking trackbacks in Google Analytics now which is quite handy.
Thanks. I was confused whether to approve Trackback or not. Your article made it very clear to me. Thanks again.
I never approve trackbacks. I’ve never seen one that is worthy of approval. What I don’t understand is how you receive a trackback from a site that doesn’t even mention your website. Do they make it invisible or do they delete after the trackback has been made? I must say, I am a little bit ignorant on the subject.
The writer puts it in their sites to ping field that is below the area that you write your posts in WordPress.
Awesome Tutorial,
Trackbacks are useful to build relationships with other bloggers by syndicating their content (An excerpt if not). But spamming is a bad approach for it.
Thanks
Hi Nile,
It was such a new and usefull article for me, As I was reading your all the above comments one thing i want to know that are trackbacks are similar to backlinks?
They can become backlinks if approved, but they would be like comments…. not much link juice weight to them.
Hey Thnxx for this post but i want to ask one thing.On my sites many trackbacks are coming from google.com
I don’t normally approve trackbacks. I don’t even bother looking at them, I just spam them rightaway whenever I get notified that I need to moderate. With that said, there might be valid ones, like you said, that’s worth looking at. I’ll keep this in mind next time I have to moderate a trackback.
I’ve always wondered about what Trackbacks to approve. At first I approved everything then I started checking them out and I went the other way and deleted all of them.
Thanks for the clarification Nile!
-Eric Out-
I never approved any trackback on my site. But i have a question in mind that is there any benefit for my website to approve the trackback?
Hi nile
nice article today i learn many thing about trackbacks are approved and which are canceled. thanks for sharing informative post.
Nile, this is amazing! I have been looking out to know more about Trackbacks, but never got time to actually start my research on it.
Personally, I only accept those trackbacks that are coming from reputable website, or at least from someone whom I know.
hi thanks for this post one should first verify the source and content so that it won’t affect your website negatively.
Really helpful post Nile – I’m in the camp of not knowing what to do with trackbacks – easy to delete those that looked like spam -but it was the rest that I didn’t know what to do with
Thanks for the clarification
To be frank, I am not a big fan of trackbacks. They spammy ones, of course, just stay away. But even the really good quality ones just rub me the wrong way. It’s sort of an automated reciprocal linking, and I can’t help but thinking that it will come back to bite a lot of people.
If somebody links to me, I am inclined not to approve the trackback, but to tweet and share on other social platforms instead – to show my appreciation, but not from the post that they linked to.
Hi David! And your preference is perfectly okay. You don’t have to accept them at all. I occasionally do depending on the source. In accepting, it requires the site owner to be more diligent in moderating them.
I tend to just delete trackbacks because a lot of the time they come from spam websites. Maybe I should look more into them when they happen. How do trackbacks help your site if the trackback comes from a reputable site?