Trackbacks are Dead (at least to me)
November 29, 2007
Back in 2002 Six Apart implemented the trackback in their Movable Type blogging platform. What is a trackback? According to wikipedia,
"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 to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type 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."
Well, I spent a little time counting the number of real trackbacks versus spam trackbacks and determined that less than 5% are ‘real’. The trackback idea is great, but it has been dead for sometime. There are a number of trackback spam solutions, but I simply don’t have the time to mess with them. I use Google Alerts to figure out who is linking to my posts and of course anyone who cares can do the same. Goodbye trackbacks…
