Do You Approve The Wrong Pingbacks?
A pingback is a notification from another website that your site has been updated. It can happen in a number of ways. You could ping a ping service, which will then notify its subscribers that your blog has been updated. Services like Technorati.com and BlogCatalog usually fall into this category.
Another type of pingback is when you link to another blog. That blog owner is notified of your link through a pingback.
Still, another type of pingback is when you bookmark your website at one of the many social bookmarking services available online. Those services will pingback to your blog because, after all, they are linking to you.
A pingback usually appears in your comments. In WordPress, you’ll get a notification in the Admin area of your blog platform letting you know that you have a comment, or pingback. You can either approve it, delete it, or mark it as spam. How you classify a pingback from a particular URL may determine how other pingbacks from the same URL are treated in the future. If you flag a pingback as spam then it may be picked up by your spam filter if it ever happens again. Just delete it and it’s gone.
So what should you do with those pingbacks? It depends.
Generally, you don’t have to do anything with ping services. They take care of themselves. You should have a list of ping services that you ping every time you update your blog. That distributes your blog posts around a little on the web, important for marketing.
If you get a pingback from another blogger that has linked to you, it’s usually a good idea to approve those. But there are times when you may not want to. If the blogger is a competitor and you have made an editorial decision not to link to competitors then you might decide to delete such pingbacks. On the other hand, many blogs link back and forth to and from competitors and it benefits both of them. Another reason you might not want to approve these pingbacks is if they appear spammy or the site linking to you is a site that you would not want your visitors to go to from yours (i.e. porn, warez, etc.). Or you might decide not to approve pingbacks for splogs and flogs (spam blogs and fake blogs), which usually are set up to borrow other people’s content and attract traffic solely through pingbacks.
Finally, I would seldom approve pingbacks from the bookmarking services. Why? Because those could be one way links. If you link back to them by approving the pingback then you are essentially cutting yourself off from one way links. Not generally a good plan. The only time you might consider approving those pingbacks is when you want your visitors to see a particular bookmark and vote it up so that it increases your chances to rank well with popular votes. Even then, my experience has been most site visitors won’t bother so I’d rather delete the pingback.
In the end, the decision is all yours. Establish a pingback policy so everyone on your staff will know when to approve pingbacks and when to delete them.
11 Responses to “Do You Approve The Wrong Pingbacks?”
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
Tel. - 877-295-0620
nick@brickmarketing.com
Connect with Nick Stamoulis
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
I normally disable pingbacks, wonder if anyone else does it by default?
Only time i approve would be if they are from good sources else its delete
Hi Ryan,
Only approving good sources of pingbacks makes total sense…
If I do not approve the pingbacks, do I still get “credit” for the link? I don’t really want them to appear on the blog posts but if I am getting links, I don’t want to delete them. Obviously, I’m new and not sure what I am doing yet.
Thanks
Hi Kirk,
Thanks for reading and the comment…I think so, I often don’t approve a pingback if it is coming from a spammy site or “splog”…spam blog…
Thx for shedding some light Nick! Like Kirk, I was afraid of not getting credit if I didn’t approve the pingbacks from blogs that linked to my blogsites. I didn’t like how the pingbacks looked in the comments area so I deleted them and I didn’t really understand what they were or how they worked. I see that the links are still there on those blogs so I would have to concur with you – that you don’t lose credit for the link if you delete it. I like allowing pingbacks, though, so that I know when I’m being linked to. I just usually don’t approve them. I never spam them – just delete. If I ever got a pingback that looked like it was interactive or something, I think I would approve it.
Hi Sally,
Thanks for your comment and sharing your viewpoint regarding approving and not approving pingbacks on your blog…
Take Care!
Nick
Hi Nick,
Great post. I do have a question though. If another blog picks up one of my posts or articles and I do not accept the ping…does this mean that I have a one way link from their site to mine?
And…if I do except the ping this means I am linking back to them?
I figure as long as its a decent site and they give me credit (a link) back to my site then all should be good!
Todd
Hi Todd,
Thanks for reading and your questions.
If you accept and approve a pingback to your blog then you are linking to them and they are linking to you…
I personally don’t approve any form of pingback. Why? Because I like 1-way links
Hi Nick. How are you?
I have a quick question. I have received over 700 pingbacks over the past 2 days to my wordpress blog mainly from article directories. Should I approve them or delete them?
Also does approving a pingback improve my blog’s page rank and ranking in the search engines?
I look forward to reading your reply!
Kind regards
Saqib Khan
Thanks for the post Nick. And great comments guys. this was very helpful. just wanted to let you know!
Mark