SEO Tycoon

**VirtuosiMedia** · 04-28-2010, 04:00 AM

I've seen the Wikipedia page on trackbacks, I know what they are and do, but I'm still not convinced that if I were to enable trackbacks on my blog, that it would provide any real value to my website.

I can figure out who is linking to each page from my referral stats. I would also argue that enabling automatic trackbacks in the comments section of a page is user UNfriendly because the trackback usually appears as unformatted gibberish in the middle of a series of comments and the user doesn't really get anything out of it.

Can anyone make a good case for enabling trackbacks that would make me change my mind?

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-03-2010, 12:23 PM

Part of the reason I ask is because I'm building a CMS that will be released sometime next year and I'm curious if anyone can make a good case for why I should include either trackbacks or pingbacks. As a user, I see them on websites all the time, but I can't say that I've ever benefited from seeing them in a comments section. In their current form, they seem more like needless clutter more than anything else.

**vangogh** · 05-03-2010, 06:46 PM

I think the original idea was that they would be a good way to keep the conversation going. You write about a topic and I have something to say, but I have more to say than is appropriate for a comment on your post so I write a post on my blog. The trackback shows on your blog and people who are interested, including yourself, might come over to my blog to see what I added to the conversation.

Unfortunately too many trackbacks take you to something useless. Some sites were just looking for a link back. Remember trackbacks predate nofollow.

As for their usefulness it's debatable. I think if they worked in practice as originally intended they could have been useful. I have them enabled on my blog, though I separated them out from the content. They don't get in the way as much when separated and they offer a bit of social proof. These 20 sites linked to this post so it must be worth reading sort of thing. It's possible they encourage links to your post because they link back out, though that also encourages spam.

Their use is questioned not only by you. I'd say if it's not too hard to code them in you might as well include them, but I would make it easy to turn them off. I don't think your CMS would suffer by not including them though.

**blue-dreamer** · 05-03-2010, 08:35 PM

Trackbacks are another thing that's been abused by SEO spammers. I'm with vangogh though, if you feel you may need them then write the functionality in but with moderation and an option to turn them off.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-03-2010, 08:46 PM

I'm leaning heavily toward not including them. I think that the original idea of being able to extend the conversation is good in a way, but it also might be seriously flawed. Very few people are going to click on the trackback seeking more conversation, both because it's not in a user friendly format, it's usually not clearly explained, and because it it means you have to trace through a spider-web of comments across multiple sites.

If anything, it might be more useful to centralize the conversation so that all of the blogs share all of the comments, with it clearly marked somehow which comments are from outside sites and a link back to each respective article from the comment. However, the trick with something like that would be figuring out shared moderation and how to control spam. If multiple blogs shared the same comments, it wouldn't be very long before people figured out that it's an easy way to get backlinks. There would also be some serious security obstacles to overcome as well. Any thoughts or ideas on having shared comments across blogs?

**vangogh** · 05-04-2010, 05:13 PM

I don't know that you'll ever see the entire conversation on one blog or site, nor do I do think that would really be a good thing. Otherwise the first place you see a topic would be the only place you'd ever see it.

Sharing comments across sites also has it's own problems. I think that would make it harder to follow things as so much content would be duplicated across sites. The idea of the conversation across sites is a good one, but having the exact same conversation across sites seems pointless.

However trackbacks, while a good idea, haven't been the best in practice. I don't think you'd suffer at all by not including them. Lots of people don't use them even when they can. On the other hand I have found good content by looking over the list of trackbacks on some posts.

Quote:

you have to trace through a spider-web of comments across multiple sites

What's wrong with that? I visit multiple sites and read multiple blogs that all talk about the same things. With comments and sharing the conversation across blogs the idea isn't that the conversation is the same across all sites. Each blog should be offering a different perspective on the same topic so the conversation and the comments should be different across sites. Some of those conversations might be interesting to you and others won't.

If the comments were on all those sites then you'd have to wade through even more comments to find the ones you want and the conversation wouldn't really stay on the same topic. You'd find people having cross conversations with each other depending on which post they're commenting on.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-04-2010, 08:08 PM

Good points. I think after reading your perspective, I won't pursue the shared comments route. The goal of them would have been to improve the conversation, but you're right in that it would be confusing.

I think what I'm looking for is a way to make trackbacks more usable and user-friendly if I were to implement them. In their current form, I think I would discard them. Any ideas on improving them?

**francis84** · 05-04-2010, 09:08 PM

Creating a trackback creates a valuable incoming link to your blog which the search engines love. Incoming links tell the search engines that another site thinks your site is one of value. Incoming links are one of the determining factors the search engines use to assess your site so trackbacks increase your SEO (search engine optimisation) beautifully.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 05-05-2010, 03:48 AM

It was my understanding that a trackback is the acknowledgement of an incoming link, not the incoming link itself. If so, it wouldn't improve the SEO of the original blog by linking back to the page linking to it. In fact, the trackback hurt the SEO of the original blog.

**eyanharve** · 05-05-2010, 05:41 AM

Thanks for sharing.

**brondsmith** · 05-05-2010, 06:03 AM

1) The purpose of TrackBack is to let a site know that you are referencing them on your on site.
2) The TrackBack URL is different than the regular permanent link URL.
3) TrackBacks are fun. You should use them.