The Value Of A Ping
The word "ping" is derived from the acronym PING, which stands for "Packet Internet Groper" (no kidding!). According to Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, a ping is designed "to get someone's attention with a sharp sound or other form of communication". The ping I'm talking about is the Internet equivalent of that kind of ping.
Most blogging software will ping other blogs automatically whenever a new article is posted. Those that don't can be made to do so by using third-party solutions. As I explained in a guest article I wrote for Pearl at Interesting Observations, pings create pingbacks. A ping is created either by a link within a post or by a specific trackback to a trackback URL that isn't a link within a post. Either type of ping will normally create a pingback on a receiving blog. What does the pingback do? It gets the attention of the author (and only the author if the ping isn't to a specific post) and the readers of that site.
Within the last 2 days, my blog received pings from 2 other blogs that I'd never been to or even heard of. Each one mentioned a different, specific blog article. I have all my comments emailed to me (I don't receive the comments for other authors like my guest author, Hari) and I received the pingbacks as comments in my email. Not being familiar with either blog, I simply had to go check them out.
Stalkk.ed
The first one I visited is called "Stalkk.ed". It's an interesting name, but I couldn't get beyond the article itself to investigate it. What a find this was! It's a list of 100+ WordPress plugins, articles and resources. I checked a couple of them out and I'll definitely be going back for more. Enrico Bertini linked to my article about WP_PingPreserver.
Needless Productions
The second one I visited is called "Needless Productions". Ryan Edmunds weighed in with his opinion on RealRank, SocialSpark and PageRank and linked to my article about SocialSpark, PayPerPost, RealRank, Google and You.
The value of the pings
By linking to my articles, both blogs have produced backlinks to my blog and are driving traffic to it. In return, my pingbacks produced backlinks for their blogs and this article will produce more. That's how Internet linking is supposed to work. Placing "rel=nofollow" attributes on links like this (which are unpaid links) defeats the purpose of organic linking in the search engines. Some bloggers are doing this and I think it's a HUGE mistake.
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I think a lot of bloggers are swinging between extremes. Either they completely disavow google and call it the next reincarnation of Satan and make themselves look stupid, or else they go all out to cringe and crawl before google and end up annoying other blogging friends in the process by using rel="nofollow" on all external links.
In both cases, they've let google win the battle because it shows their abysmal ignorance of technology and an unhealthy obsession with PageRank.
hari's last blog post..A change of tagline
That's what I like about you, Hari. You say things in a way that I can't and you're absolutely right.
It's actually a plan on my part to take over the world using PapaRank™
hari's last blog post..PapaRank? – ranking for human beings
[...] to read his posts even when I barely have a clue what he's talking about, like this one about Packet Internet Gropers. There always seems to be a lively conversation about Pagerank, or the legalities of pirated stuff, [...]
I have only been blogging for about 9 months now and have already gone through many evolutionary steps:
1) ignorance
2) slavish devotion to anything that would improve visability, ranking of any sort, promotion.
3) self-imposed ignorance: do my own thing. take care of my blog and hope the blog takes care of itself.
I think your post above is spot on. If you recognize and assist those that helps you – well, does it truly matter what Google thinks?
I'm still a little lost on the PING concept but I'll do my best to 'hook you up' – LOVE the blog.
I'm always trying to find creative ways to pay back the people that link here. Ways that don't look like spam to the search engines (or to people for that matter).
I agree Hari.
I have no idea whether my free wordpress blog puts in the no follow , I have no contol over that but people that use no-follow to the extreme forget they they want others to follow their links but for some reason not return the favour.strange.
RT you are one of the few that seem to really go out your way to help others with links (and in turn that helps you). Well done.
goldcoaster's last blog post..Last Chaos
I have noticed that the CommentLuv plugin adds no follow to the link.
goldcoaster's last blog post..Last Chaos
The nofollow attribute is added when the author URL doesn't have it. My author URL doesn't have it.
could you explain this to me?
(I did type s-o-r-r-y with out hyphens but wordpress said that word was spam??)
goldcoaster's last blog post..Foola the best iTunes replacement – updated
I'll try. I use the "dofollow" plugin to strip the rel="nofollow" attribute from the author URL (in your case http://goldcoaster.wordpress.com/ . The actual comments do not strip it out. Commentluv doesn't strip it out unless the author URL still has it on there (i.e. no plugin to strip it).
The spam filter filters sorry only if it's the first word in the comments. Still, all you have to do is click it on the error screen to post it.
I see – just to stop double dofollows.
Why pick up Sorry as the first word – do a lot of spammers start with sorry?
goldcoaster's last blog post..Foola the best iTunes replacement – updated
Yes, here's a list:
cool
wow cool
interesting
wow interesting
nice
wow nice
sorry
wow sorry
[...] The Value of a Ping: from RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex. At first I thought I was looking at a golf post, and then I wondered if it was the 'ping' command he was talking about, but it turns out to be about ping backs from other blogs, including a couple he'd never even heard of linking back to his site, and the resulting traffic, and, more importantly, the new information from the other sites, that was generated. [...]
Wow I had no idea or even thought to look that up before, and very nice correlation between the club and the ping a blog makes.
Texas Golfer’s last blog post… Texas Golf Resorts Best
Thanks for explaining the Ping and pingback concepts. I didn't really understand it until now. After all, Blogging is all about people, conecting to each other.