The Truth about Trackbacks - How they Work

I've had requests for examples to Illustrate how trackbacks works in the bombastic world of blogging. So at the risk of boggling you further, here's a shot at it.

Do us both a favor and please just look at each item as presented before moving on to the second item. I promise this will give you better results than just reading it through in one long jumble of information.

Item One:
The 9 rules team posted a blog entry here

That's pretty clear, right? So we can move on quickly to Item Two.

Item Two:

Below the blog entry you will see a line that reads: Trackback URL for this entry:
  http://9rules.com/blog/2006/01/building-9rules-episode1/trackback/

 

Found that? Let's look at

 

Item Three: Below the trackback address (referenced above) for that blog entry you will see a line that reads: Trackback URL two different sets of "comments."

Separating these into A and B, let's look at each and how they look in the blog.

Item Three A:
One set of comments are really more than that. And this is very very important so listen up: They are entries on OTHER blogs that refer back to this story.

They are labeled like this:
         Weblogs that reference   Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1:
_______________________________________________________

That is followed by actual bits of entries written about this blog article.

These appear like this:
» Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 on The uber geeks

[…] 1 By Colin D. Devroe with no reader comments For you WordPress, PHP geek types: Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 is up and running. Leave feedback […]

Tracked on: January 15, 2006

-
Below all of these entries referencing other blogs, you will find the second group, which are actually comments submitted to/on this post of this blog
.

Item Three B:
appearing like this: Reader Comments

Chris J. Davis on January 15, 2006 said:

Great to see you sharing the experience of building something like 9rules with the rest of humanity.
I am really looking forward to reading the other ‘episodes’ as they come out.

OK, so there are a whole parcel of these and they;re not required reading, I just wanted you to have a feel for the differences between comments and trackback articles.
-

And that brings us to the end of the tour.
-

So what do you know now?

Well, if along the way you clicked on one of the links to an article which references the 9rules blog post (like » Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 on The uber geeks ) you have seen:

• a demonstration of one way it is beneficial for you to not simply comment on another blog (which IS a good thing as long as what you say is pertinent, or amusing or generally worthwhile,or also good if you ask a question to keep the conversation going) 
• but also an illustration of why it is critical that every so often you write a related article on your blog referencing something you read on another blog. My advice is to try for at least one short entry a week based on - and most importantly, linked to - another blog in your field of interest.

The catch is that to "count" (and get listed on the actual blog) this has to be about anther blog entry that accepts trackback pings.

You can easily tell if it's easily pingable if you see something like this listed below the post:

Trackback URL for this entry: http://9rules.com/blog/2006/01/building-9rules-episode1/trackback/

This gives you something that blogging geeks call "incoming links", which are a critical part of the obscure and baffling formula by which blog directories and search engines like technorati and Google rank your blog.

And why do you need incoming links?

Hey, that's enough learning for one night. I'll give you details later, Or maybe we'll have a commenter that makes a good point on the subject.

In the meantime, I challenge readers to pick a blog that you wouldn't mind getting some traffic from and get out there and practice what you know about what a trackback does.

 

Hint -

If you click on the word Trackback below you'll see this:

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/4096112

To have a post from YOUR blog show up here you'll need to
a.) Write a post to your blog and talk about this entry
b.) Send a ping to the address above
c.) Sit back and feel the accomplishment

oh - and maybe follow that up with

d.) Rinse and repeat whenever you feel like it

 

Comments

[Cecilia]

Fantastic! I'm going to try this right now on my new wordpress journal! Thank you so much.

[Angie Pedersen]

I've made two posts about Trackbacks -- one explaining what a Trackback is [http://angiepedersen.typepad.com/blogofme/2005/04/trackback_blogg.html] and one on how to Trackback, with screenshots [http://angiepedersen.typepad.com/blogofme/2005/07/how_to_trackbac.html]. Just a heads up! :)