Confused about what’s a pingback? It’s not surprising since the blogging term pingback often mystifies new bloggers.
Thankfully Marie reminded me of how baffling blogging terminology is when she commented “I’ve noticed some comments are entered via ‘pingback’. Can you explain what this is and how to use it?”.
What is a Pingback?
A pingback happens when another blogger writes a post and includes a link to your post in their post. When they publish their post you’ll normally receive an email notification letting you know they have referenced (i.e. linked to) your post. The email notification commonly includes an extract from the post they’ve written, a link to their post and a link to the post you had written.
Marie’s been nice enough to help me demonstrate a pingback by writing a post that links to one of my posts. Below is what the email notification of pingback from Marie’s post looks like.

Clicking on the link to their post means you can:
- Check out what they’ve written
- Leave a comment on their post (if you choose)
- Decide whether you want to approve, delete or spam the pingback. Mostly you approve all pingbacks unless it obviously been written by a spam blog (these you delete or spam).
Once you’ve approved the pingback it’s displayed in the comments on your post with just the extract of post showing enclosed in brackets like these [...]. This is so other readers can follow the link and read the post on the other persons blog if they are interested.
Below is what Marie’s pingback looks like in the comments on my post.

How To Link To Other Bloggers’ Posts
Reading blog posts that talks about other bloggers’ posts but doesn’t include links to them is really frustrating for readers. Why? Because readers like to follow the links and check out the information in more detail but without the links they can’t!
All you have to do is:
- Copy the URL of the post you want to link to.

- In the post that you are writing highlight the text you want linked to the post, click on Insert/Edit Link button, paste the post URL and then click INSERT.

It’s good blogging etiquette to link to:
- A person’s blog if you mention a blogger
- The post if you are talking about a particular post on a blog
I suggest you take the time to check out when I’ve chosen to link to a person’s blog as opposed to their post by following the links.
Another reason for linking is bloggers like to check out posts that people write about them. But most will never know you’ve written about them, or visit your blog, unless link to their blog.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Please feel free, anytime, to let me know any information you would like explained!
Meanwhile you might find What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links helpful!
If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider
Subscribing For Free!