Trackback

A trackback allows one website to notify another about an update.

SilverStripe, WordPress, Drupal, and Movable Type, supports automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged

when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of linkback.

History

The TrackBack specification was created by

IETF. One notable blogging service that does not support trackback is Blogger. Instead, Blogger provides "backlinks",^[3]

which allow users to employ Google's search infrastructure to show links between blog entries.

A trackback is an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (XML-RPC ping) from the originating site to the receiving site. The receptor often publishes a link back to the originator indicating its worthiness. Trackback requires both sites to be trackback-enabled in order to establish this communication.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between

blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping

"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

Software support

URL" with every entry. This URL is used by the commenting blogger, whose software will send XML

-formatted information about the new entry to this URL. Some blogging tools are able to discover these TrackBack URLs automatically, others require the commenting blogger to enter them manually.

Spam

Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack feature to insert

spam filters similar to those implemented against comment spam now exist in many weblog publishing systems. Many blogs have stopped using trackbacks because dealing with spam became too much of a burden.^{[citation needed}

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