A trackback feature of many publishing software/programs like WordPress, Moveable Type, TextPattern, etc. or even free hosts like Blogger, enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and referring to their posts. It has been considered as “communication” among blogs. Linking to other websites, which will automatically be called trackback, means several things:
1. It shows appreciation and acknowledgment.
2. It indicates worthiness of the article linked.
3. It’s one way of expressing your reaction to another blogger’s articles.
4. It’s one way of getting comments. If you send trackbacks to other blogs, there’s a great possibility that the blogger will compliment you through commenting to your post.
5. It’s one way of building inbound links. Inbound links are used by search engines to rank web pages.
Just as much as it’s a great help to bloggers, it also gives headaches to some. This feature has been a spam vector with some individuals abusing it. Websites giving trackback spam are usually Adsense-generating websites, which are mainly using bots to track posts containing certain post tags.
A trackback spam can affect the blogger attacked by it. It may “clog up” the server, which may lead to your site’s suspension. Your blog could be regarded as spam, too. It will also significantly affect your search engine rankings. Recently, Jehzlau Concepts was attacked by a link spammer linking to his post about the nursing board exam results, causing some of his pages be removed from SERPs.
Trackback spam is equally loathsome with comment spam. Matt said that all the captcha in the world won’t fix trackback spam.
So how to prevent trackback spam? I’ve been experiencing trackback spam in my health blog. I’ve been getting lot of trackbacks from disguised weight loss and other “supposedly” health related sites. Lately, however, I’ve managed to bust most of them. These are the few things that worked for me.
I installed the Spam Trackback Validator plugin. This plugin works in two ways:
- It checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to and
- It retrieves the web page located at the URL used in the trackback and checks if the page contains a link to your blog.
It has blocked more than 100 trackback spam few minutes after installing it.
Other trackback spam blocking techniques:
- The WordPress team recommends removing the wp-trackback.php but this might not be a good idea because it blocks all the legitimate trackbacks to your site. You won’t be informed on who links to your site.
- Removing any tagging plugin might work. Blogging platforms, like WordPress features automatic pinging which sends a note to tag services that you’ve updated your blog using your tags. Get to know more about tags here. However, removing your tagging plugin is not good for search engine optimization.
- Use Spam Karma plugin. Spam Karma automatically blocks spam bots from entering your blog.