What is a Pingback?

A pingback is a special comment that’s exclusive to a WordPress website. It’s created when you link to another blog post, but only if the other blog is set to accept pingbacks.  WordPress posts the comment when your blog article is linked on another blog.

As an example, if another WordPress website links to your article in one of theirs, you will get what’s called a “pingback” notification that will show up as a comment on the blog post that they linked to.

Only certain weblog content management systems, (like WordPress , Movable Type and less common Serendipity) support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article are be notified when the article is published. This automatic notification is called a “ping”.

If you link to a post or article on a blog using a supported CMS, it will create a link in the comment section of that page. The readers of that article might click on your link and check out what you have to say as well. Pingbacks are now often seen as spammy as they automatically inform the relevant parties on behalf of the blogger, and it allows for links to be posted in the comments. These extra links are often created artificially to promote fake websites.

The pingback takes no effort from the linking author as WordPress does it on its own, requires no manual user attention to work, and is implemented on the idea of automatic discovery. Pingbacks in WordPress have evolved from the former use of trackbacks. If your website is configured to,  you might also receive an email notifying you of a new comment you can check before approving the pingback.