What are trackbacks and pings, and how are they used?

Question

I am relatively new to the idea of promoting my blog. I don't want to spam anyone, and I'm not in search of meaningless traffic. I'd like to gain real readers who are interested in what I have to say and who probably have things to say that I will be interested in. I've been told that trackbacks and pings are ways that bloggers interact, and I've been told that you can't both trackback and ping the same blog. I'm still pretty lost, though. Help?

Answer 1

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A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer. It works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies. Ping estimates the round-trip time, generally in milliseconds, and records any packet loss, and prints a statistical summary when finished.

Source(s):

Beware of Evil Dogs!

Answer 2

Hmmm...looks like previous poster answered your question about pings & trackbacks, however if you are looking to find people across the world to look at your blog & give you feedback there then the best thing for you to do is browse through other peoples blogs, leave comments on those that you like & soon, they will start coming to see what yo have to say, as well.
Bloggers form unofficial communities (I guess some are official) and what I have found is that when I befriend one blogger, I usually end up befriending several of their fellow bloggers as well & vice-versa.
Good Luck!

Answer 3

When someone links to one of your posts, and your post links back to those of your links, it is considered as trackbacks

Pinging (in blog) is used to tell or notify search engines that you make an update.