If you’ve had a WordPress blog up and running for a while, you will probably have trackbacks mixed with the real comments, especially the posts and pages which links other posts to a blog. Also, with nofollow links being counted as backlinks, there is no point to 2-way links.
# Disable Self-Ping Trackbacks on WordPress
Some people really like the fact that WordPress sends pings from your own site to the same location when you write posts. It gives them a trail of related posts. Some people do not like this behavior as it clutters their comments. This plugin disables intra-blog pinging and trackbacks.
> Plugin Link: no-self-ping | Plugin Search: “No Self Ping“
Disabling Trackbacks On WordPress Completely
Go to WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Discussion
Turn off Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).
# Delete All Present Trackbacks Using Plugin
Earlier, there used to be a method in which you search for “[…]” which returned all trackbacks on your blog. However, It stopped working for some time and I had to find a new solution for this. That is when I bumped into the WordPress plugin called “Remove Pingback-Trackback Comments” which, despite not being updated for two years, still works.
Once you install and activate the plugin, go to Tools > Remove Pingbacks-Trackback Comments and configure the settings. Here is what the screenshot looks like before cleaning up:
Before you click on Perform Changes, it is a good idea to take a complete backup of your WordPress database. Since the changes will be done on the database, it is a suggested step.
Here is a screenshot of using the plugin. It deleted all the pingbacks which were cluttering my WordPress comment section.
Once done, you can disable and delete the WordPress plugin. Another suggested step after this is to optimize your WordPress database. This will speed up your blog database and will also improve the overall loading time of your WordPress blog.
Do you think disabling trackback and pingbacks is a good idea, or should we allow trackbacks to show our love towards people who linked to our blog posts? Let us know.
Here are a few recommended WordPress posts that you should read next:
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I was curious if you ever thought of changing the page layout of your site?
Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better.
Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or two pictures.
Maybe you could space it out better?
hey jasa,
Thank you for the feedback. We are planning a new layout for SML. Hope you will like our upcoming layout.
Nice post. After I learnt my first lesson from my other blog, I made this the first thing to do after installing wordpress.
Thanks bro.
Question:
If I don’t ‘accept’ these trackbacks from internal linking in my comments, will they still pass through page rank?
Thanks for the information. I was looking for a way remove the clutter of self pings. I have 1400+ now started removing it…
Thanks again for the tip.
I am still a bit confused about pinbacks and if I should delete them or show them. But reading a lot of different posts, it seems that they do not influence your SEO ranking no matter what you do. Is that correct?
Hi how we can stop automatic approve trackback and pingback on our wordpress blog site. we have a large of spam in form of pingback and trackback .
@Bineet Are you using Akismet plugin???
That will be really helpful.. You can also disable Pingback & trackback feature from Settings> Discussion
“Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) “
Thanks for The Info On Trackbacks on word press. I will put your advice to good use on my wordpress blog.
Thanks… needed to stop displaying trackbacks… googled and here you are with the solution… thanks!
I too was getting my own site trackbacks and thought it to be some spam and virus problem. Thanks for the info. Maybe wordpress should give an option to use this feature or not. But I am still not clear whether nofollow links are also counted as backlinks.
Am I missing something? Since when did nofollow links count as backlinks?
Google actually does still bleed some PR through the nofollows even when we tell them not to. Nofollows definitely count as actually somewhat solid backlinks. If you comment on a blog that the url field is still nofollow you are still getting some SEO credit, its just maybe 1/10th as much as if it is DoFollow. Google uses its “own discretion” to decide how much credit it gives the nofollow link and those links still have to be paid attention to.
Kim
No Ping is a very useful as you are doing anchor text optimization.. 🙂
Good info i am using this plugin now and it is really good as we all know self ping is not important.
Thank You 🙂
I’ve always used a no self ping plugin on my blogs for those exact reasons. I don’t need my site referring to itself. If I want to create additional readership I will use other methods.
One of the best Ive found lately is the linkwithin plugin widget that says you might enjoy “post 1,2,3,4,or5” and displays an image as well. I see in my analytics people are clicking all over that.
Linkwithin is an excellent way to show Related posts on your blog .. It has been found to improve bounce rate significantly….
You can read SML’s review on Linkwithin Here.
Will do. I notice a ton of page views referred by the linkwithin plugin. I am sort of wondering if that reduces comments though because of where it appears.
I just think it shows appreciation to fellow bloggers for helping to promote your posts.
To each his own, but I would list them seperately at the end of the comments.
This plugin is helpful when you do not want to show appreciation to yourself 🙂
Consider this:
When I write in my ‘post A’ that my previous ‘post X’ (hyperlinked) got PR3, Post X automatically gets a ping from post A which will make Post X leak its PR towards post A. Now presuming that I am trying to build a strong reader base & PR for post X, then, this will come in my way badly as whenever I am refering to post X, I am leaking its PR.
This plugin will be highly useful in such scenarios.
Finally, someone who responded what I meant to imply… here.
If fact I have seen this on my blog… where high page rank posts giving away PR juices to posts I didn’t even Link to… later I found out there were trackbacks.
what’s wrong with Trackbacks and Pings?
Nothing Actually….. 🙂
This is a guide for people like me who wants to disable new ones and delete the previous one…
coz I have seen popular blogs with a huge trackbacks list… looks quite clumsy if not themed properly.
I think I should have added “How to” to this post’s tile… 😛
My Suggestion is to accept trackbacks but never show them on your post. Trackbacks are only useful to the blog author if he wants to check where he is getting links but for a average blog reader or commenter, trackbacks are not very worthy and just waste space. So you should hide them on the post page but keep them enabled.
Hi Navjot,
how do you actually do that – is there a way to hide them but keep them eabled without using a plugin?
e.g. presumably unchecking ‘Allow Trackbacks/Pingbacks’ on the individual page/post is not doing what you suggest, but how can I hide them whilst keeping them enabled?
i also like to show the trackbacks and pingbacks….anything wrong with that??
I always show trackbacks and pingbacks. If fellow bloggers take the time to link to my content, the least I can do is allow their trackback to appear.
It’s called being social and engaging with other bloggers.
You are right about that… thats way tracksbacks are meant for… but not all trackbacks are worthy…. and there is no use of self (intra-blog) trackbacks. What do you think ?
Self trackbacks can lead to additional pageviews and keeping the visitor on your site longer. This could lead to that visitor being a repeat visitor.
Agreed… 🙂 You mean like Related Posts…
But one thing is for Sure..
Trackbacks quite are helpful when a “Blogger” is Reading someone else’s blogs, helps to know the recent links backs and what’s currently hot there.
I will agree with FAqPal and even I think that self ping will help in increasing page views when we considering ping back as the point of exit from the site. .
My question is, if we disable and remove the trackbacks and pingbacks will it help our blogs in the long term with pagerank etc or is it just mainly as a form of de-cluttering the blog?
Karen if we are showing trackback from the similar websites it won’t effect page rank, but these days most of the trackbacks are sent via auto feeds or twitter harvester, which doesn’t deserve a link back. In another word, accpeting trackback is showing your appreciation to people who linked to your article. Another side of it is, it will drive traffic away from you, as showing trackback acts as an exit point.
Getting back to your question, if you use some theme which shows trackback and excerpt as seperate entity, this will not make it look cluttered.
but the final decision is yours, do you want to show trackback or not. 🙂
Harsh is right…..
But I think, Suppose you have a high page rank “post” say “pr-3” . Now it might be there a Lot of Trackbacks to this post from other posts on your blog. Its true the page rank juice will be passed to the trackbacked posts pages. But why waste it like that, esp when you can edit that post and target some keywords from inside the post to some other post you want to rank high on serp.
Believe me this works…..
This is actually something I want to have in a standard version of WordPress. A majority must be against showing their own trackbacks.
Initially I was not aware of how to get rid of that, the day I got to know about no sefl ping plugin, even i wished the same. As showing trackback from your own blog does not make sense.