Pingbacks: Beware of Comment Spam!
For starters it’s best to define Pingbacks and their value. Then, let’s look at how you must be careful with Pingbacks because of how they can be used as harmful spam.
Pingbacks are really a neat technology that allow business bloggers to be notified [via comment] when someone else links to their blog. Now this is assuming both blogs are set up to enable Pingbacks. Our clients can choose the option to allow them, but so long as they carefully moderate their comments we recommend they do. Think of them as follows:
- You, Blogger A, blog a new post.
- Someone else, Blogger B, sees and appreciates the post enough to link to it.
- That link from B automatically generates a Pingback to your Blog A.
- For confirmation purposes, Blog A actually checks that the link actually exists at Blog B.
- If so, Pingback is added to Blog A’s comments to notify Blogger A of the generous link from B.
So far as you - the advertorial business blog owner - are concerned, Pingbacks arrive in your comments offering you the value of knowing who’s linking to you. Very cool eh?!
Now, this is where things get tricky because regardless of the aforementioned value. There are still bad folks out there that would try and gain entry to your blog via your comments for links back to themselves. Backlinks can be great OR they may be used for less than positive reasons. Hopefully, you have your Business Blog set to moderate comments [our clients do.] Assuming this is the case, Pingbacks will not automatically show up in your public comments. On the contrary, they will await moderation for when -just in case- the Pingback [with backlink] is bad.
Why is it potentially harmful spam you ask? The obvious answer is, why would you ever allow worthless comments on to your blog where prospective clients are looking ? The equally important answer is that bad links can damage your blogs competitive page rank… and as advertorial bussiness bloggers we can’t afford this. With search engines like Google, the algorithm uses your link structure to evaluate versus competitors.
YOU MUST CAREFULLY REVIEW ALL COMMENTS IN MODERATION, particularly the URL of the back link before taking them public. Again they may be fine, but they may also be spam.
In the end Pingbacks can be great tools, but evaluate them first. Please folks, be careful!
Contributed by Chris Frereckschris@kineticknowledge.com
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