This post is being used as a means to demonstrate what a legitimate trackback looks like, and how it should be used. The site it’s pinging is Dave Mitchell’s "Sparsely, Sage…" blog about West Marin County – a freshly hatched blog that is already building up some impressive traffic stats. <\/p>\n
Usually a trackback is a comment that someone is making on something you wrote that is hosted on their site. <\/p>\n
\nLet me explain. <\/p>\n
\nSay you write something about the Bolinas Water Board. Someone from
\nthe board reads it and wants to respond. This person also has a blog
\n(or website). <\/p>\n
\nOnly their response won’t fit into the small space alloted for comments. <\/p>\n
\nSo what they do is write a long response with charts, graphs and
\nphotos, all in support of your brilliant proposition that the Bolinas
\nBoard should just hook up the sewage outflow pipes to the water inflow
\npipes to create the perfect closed system. <\/p>\n
\nThe Board member then publishes this article on their blog and in the
\nlittle space that says "Trackback" – they put in the web address for
\nyour article. <\/p>\n
\nNow the real fun begins. The Board member’s site sends a "ping" (like
\nin the old submarine movies) to your site saying in effect "Hey,
\nthere’s this article here that says that it’s related to what you
\nwrote. Here’s the first paragraph and a link to the article." <\/p>\n
\nThen, in your comments section, a little comment appears that starts
\nout with the first 200 or so characters of whatever the Board member
\nwrote, usually something like "I was reading Dave Mitchell’s brilliant
\nblog the other day, and his innovative (albeit stinky) solution to the
\nBolinas Water problems sparked a thought …" (click here for more) <\/p>\n
\nReaders of your blog then can click the link to find out what it is
\nthat the Board member has to say. It’s a nifty little bit of technology
\nthat bloggers use to engage in backscratching, logrolling,
\none-hand-washing-the-otherism. <\/p>\n
\nOne of the things that it does is to help bloggers boost each other’s
\nrankings on Google and Technorati. These search engines look to see how
\nimportant a blogger\/website is by checking to see how many people are
\nlinking to its content. If you have a lot of original content, a lot
\nof people will link to you, saying "Hey, I read this really original
\nbit of news the other day…" <\/p>\n
\nThus, Google, Technorati, Blogpulse, et al., all figure that you are
\nsomeone that is actually putting in work, coming up with interesting,
\noriginal content, and that as such, you should be rewarded for that. <\/p>\n
\nNow then. (Cue ominous music) The unscrupulous scam artists on the web
\nhave figured out that using trackbacks is a really great way to boost
\nthemselves up in the Google et al. rankings. Long enough, at least,
\nfor them to be able to sell whatever it is that they’re selling ("Fix
\nyour credit report!" "Get a 500 free porno movies" "Win at online
\npoker!") before people figure out that they’re scam
\nartists\/thieves\/stealing credit card numbers for their white slavery
\nring in Belarus. <\/p>\n
\nThus, once a website\/blog starts getting to a certain level, the
\nspammers start sending trackback spam. Because if there’s a link to a
\nhighly-ranked website, it tricks Google et al. into ranking their scam
\nsite a bit higher. In effect, the spammers start trading in on your
\ngood name and reputation to boost their own criminal enterprise. <\/p>\n
\nThe print equivalent would be someone sneaking into your printing press
\nand stuffing a one-page snake-oil ad into the Light before it gets
\ndistributed. Actually, that’s comment spam – which is somewhat
\nself-explanatory. <\/p>\n
\nI guess trackback spam would be analogous to someone dressing up like a
\nPoint Reyes Light paper deliveryman and going around the West Marin
\nneighborhoods and delivering the paper by knocking on the front door
\nand distracting the housewife – whilst a confederate sneaks around the
\nback, jimmys the kitchen door and makes off with Grandma’s silver and
\nthe Franklin Mint Commemorative Elvis Presley dinnerplate collection. <\/p>\n
\nThis is why you get notifications as to when someone posts comments or
\ntrackbacks to your site. That way, you can see if it’s from a
\nlegitimate commenter with something to say – or if it’s a guy in a
\nblack-and-white striped shirt with a Zorro mask tied around his eyes,
\nwanting to borrow your delivery van for a few hours "to run some
\nerrands."<\/p>\n
\nMoving on. <\/p>\n
\nIn your case, from what I can see, the comments are not from an outside
\nsource or scammer. It appears that for whatever reason, when you posted
\nthe new table of contents, with links to all your stories, what that
\ndid was trigger the technological "trackback" widget, which took the
\nfirst few grafs of your post and then put it into your comment section,
\nand sent you the notification to say "Whadday think about this guy,
\nboss? Should we let him take the van? He says his granny is real sick
\nand needs her medicine." <\/p>\n
\nIn this case, the guy asking for the van … is you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post is being used as a means to demonstrate what a legitimate trackback looks like, and how it should be used. The site it’s pinging is Dave Mitchell’s "Sparsely, Sage…" blog about West Marin County – a freshly hatched blog that is already building up some impressive traffic stats. Usually a trackback is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[389,352,370,354,390],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-memetagging","tag-online-multimedia","tag-webtech","tag-weblogs","tag-webscams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}