LinkBacks - Refback, Pingback, Trackback - What are they?
A LinkBack is a name for a BackLink on a Blog post - and there are 3 types :
- RefBack
- PinkBack
- TrackBack
It’s a little confusing, but I’ll make it clear.
I’m going to start with a PingBack - as it makes the others easier to explain.
PingBack
Pingback is a method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Typically, web publishing software will automatically inform the relevant parties on behalf of the user, allowing for the possibility of automatically creating links to referring documents.
For example, Jack writes an interesting article on her Web log. Sarah then reads this article and comments about it, linking back to Jack’s original post. Using pingback, Sarah’s software can automatically notify Jack that her post has been linked to, and Jack’s software can then include this information on her site.
The web publishing software could be any blog type software such as WordPress, Blogger etc.
Automatic Pingback is where the checking of the link is done automatically. These are less prone to Spam than Trackbacks - as they need to be reciprocal.
Here is a great example of a PingBack - look at the bottom of this page - anchortexts. You can see that this post has a PostBack reference back to this post. It looks like this :
RefBack
When a browser takes you from one site to another it passes the referrer (originating webpage) information. If a site is Refback enabled it’ll record this referrer and link back to the original site. This very similar to PingBack but it doesn’t check if the site actually exists. This can be easily spammed by changing the referrer tag in posts and automating it.
TrackBack
TrackBack is the most commonly used form of LinkBack and is probably the most popular with bloggers - enabled by the blogging publishing software. Trackbacks don’t require that the originating site have a link back to destination site. Trackbacks are like comments with links in them.
TrackBacks are great way of generating BackLinks as you can target relevant content and get a link back to your site. Take care to get those anchortexts right though.
Thanks for returning - Spread the word - Tell your friends that they can subscribe via email
Related Posts
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Translator
By N2H
[...] as you can target relevant content and get a link back to your site. Take care to get those anchortexts right [...]