Pingback is a unique comment created when you link to another blog post if the other blogger or author a pingback-enabled website. Pingback lets you alert the author that you have linked to their post on your site.
The notified blogger can then allow your link to appear on their site in return. Pingback and trackback are the same, with slight technical differences.
How to Create a Pingback in WordPress
Setting up a pingback is simple:
First, create a link (i.e., clickable text) to another WordPress blog post from inside the post or a page on your website.
Then, if the post is pingback-enabled, the owner sees the pingback in their comments section. Depending on how your WordPress theme is constructed, your site pingbacks may or may not show an extract from the other person’s blog.
You can also allow or disallow pingbacks in the “Discussion Settings” of your Admin Panels. For example, if you select “attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article,” WordPress notifies other blog owners that you have linked to them.
In other words, it will send a pingback. If you check “allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks),” you will get trackbacks when other authors link to your content. These show up in your admin panel, where you usually find comments. Whether they display on individual posts are decided by your theme, not your WordPress settings.
Pingback Use Cases
Consider pingbacks as automated comments. For example:
- You write and publish a post titled “Excellent Post.”
- A reader, who also has a website, likes your post and wants to write their own and link it back to yours.
- When they link back to “Excellent Post” on their site, you receive a notification, which is the “pingback.”
- The pingback tells you and other site visitors that someone has linked your post on their site and can then display a particular comment linking back to their post.
- Pingbacks appear along with other comments on the post.
