WordPress sends pings to your own site when you link to other posts on your blog internally! This appears as a pingback on the post you have linked to, in the comments section. While it makes it easier to leave a trail of inter-related posts, I find this feature of WordPress quite absurd!

When you link to a previous blog entry, it becomes a trackback to that entry from the new one. It also provides a forward link to the latest published post and some may love it, but what I don’t like about this behavior is that it appears in the recent comments widget. Added to my own responses to the comments on Inspirit, it looks like its only me who ever comments on my blog. Moreover, it adds to the clutter in the comments section as self-pings are quite meaningless and useless to the audience.

No one will ever need to respond to a trackback or a pingback, so I have even set my threaded comments options to exclude trackbacks and pingbacks from the “reply to” list. This means there will be no reply button against any trackback or pingback on my blog, in the comments.

Anyway, let us come back to the point of this post:
How to prevent your WordPress blog from pinging itself?

BlogWaffe.com offers this simple but awesome WordPress plugin called No Self Pings to disable self pinging on your blog. Its easy to install it just like any other plugin:

Installation:
Download the plugin, put it in your WordPress plugins directory, activate it via your WordPress admin panel, and you’re set.

No configuration is necessary, according to the plugin author. This is one of the plugins that I have been using since the inception of my blog without the slightest trouble through any kind of WordPress updates. Nifty Tool!

Another way to prevent self pings is to use relative hyperlinks while linking to your own previously made blog entries. Simply omit the domain name from the link:

instead of: <a href=”http://www.inspiritblog.com/?cat=120″>Category: Comments</a>

Use this: <a href=”/?cat=120″>Category: Comments</a>

And you’ll stop getting self-pings.

There’s also this support topic at WordPress.Org: How do I stop links to other posts in same weblog producing a pingback? that you’ll find helpful.

What do you think, is self pinging healthy? Do you allow self-pings on your WordPress blog? Take a minute to drop a comment and share…

Published by Abhinav Sood

43 thoughts on “Do Not Ping Your Own WordPress Blog!”

  1. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with self-pings. In fact, I see it as a good thing since you are increasing the internal linking within your site. What I did for my blog is to separate the pings from the comments so that the commentators will not have a hard time reading the comments. 🙂

  2. Great Post as usual, you “pinged” the nail on the head! Pinging yourself is redundant and a waste. I do agree with Alex that the recent comments plug in is wasted and useless. Top Comenters makes more sense for networking

  3. Unfortunately, the Top Commentators plugin ain’t working on my installation. I’ll be working on it after college today.

    And Like there are two sides to Self-Pinging, there are two sides to Recent Comments Widget. While Top Commentators plugin lets you reward the top commentators at your blog… Recent Comments help your readers track what post has been most active on your blog recently. This may act as an Inspirit for them to head to the post and participate in the discussion.
    🙂

    1. Hey thanks GeoServ!
      BTW, I thought this service was going to be some kind of StumbleUpon pump… Thanks for the link anyway. Hope to see some traffic flowing in from this network.
      🙂

      1. For now its just a site for users to submit anything they find using StumbleUpon that they think fellow members would like.

        I have it setup so users can put their StumbleUpon RSS ID in their profile, and the site will add anything they thumb up automatically.

        Its a work in progress, but I think it could be successful someday.

        I am now a frequent visitor here.

  5. I wonder before if we can ping our wordpress blog but it seems that it would just delay the process although there is some people still using “Ping-O-Matic” . But it seems that your plug in is also worth a try so I might try it out as well in some of my blogs. What I keep in mind is that you just need to ping real useable content.

  6. The best thing I can do for this wonderful source is to say that I’m a biggest fan of this website

  7. excellent. i didnt even know wordpress did this until 10 minutes ago. trying out the plugin now.

    k235s last blog post..keiner will blu ray und die zukunft des fernsehens

  9. I suppose it really depends on whether you have a social blog or not. I don’t do social blogging any more but when I did I always deleted the pingbacks manually. I knew that there was a plugin to stop it happening but never seemed to get round to installing it. With my “money” blogs I just leave the pingbacks so that there is increased internal linking.

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  11. Thanks for the useful post, and debate in the comments. There are pros and cons to KeywordLuv and CommentLuv. For me, CommentLuv has a slight advantage as it provides a deep-link to a blog post, as well as a general link to the homepage. Assuming you have keywords in your post-titles, you get the best of both.

    EJs last blog post..Busby SEO Challenge Team’s Magnum Opus

  12. I thought that internal linking within a site is important for SEO reasons. I didn’t realize that trackbacks were happening when linking to other posts within a site, but it was my understanding that it does help your site by internally linking within a blog.

    Devins latest published blog-post ………. Best Burger Deal on Campus

  13. I don’t normally leave comments… but I really enjoyed your post! I will be leaving a link back here in my blogroll! Thanks!

  14. Internal linking is very important, and if its done right with the right types of anchor text, you will notice a very large increase in your SERPS..

    Pinging still works, and it has worked for me for years…. Even for my own posts..

  15. Hey, very interesting post.

    My written English is not so good so I write in German:

    “Lieber den Spatz in der Hand, als die Taube auf dem Dach.”

    Yours sincerely
    Luxus

  18. I can see your point about top commentsor recent comments being all of yours. If you only post every now and then i am sure it is fine but if you write alot that would look like your the only one on the site. Great post did not even think about recent comments and how track back effects them.

  20. Internal linking is important as another comment said but pinging your own blog is the wrong way to do it

  21. Good post – I’ve never thought of that. I’m using related post plugin witch is enough for interlinking your own pages, no need to self ping.

  22. Thanks for this unqiue approach. I’ll take a look into this on my WordPress blog.

  23. Interesting information, I’ve never though about it like that. I usually just let it do what it want’s to. I look forward to trying out the plugin when i get a chance.

  25. Good post. I had not thought about recent comments and how track back effects them.

  26. Great Post as usual, you “pinged” the nail on the head! Pinging yourself is redundant and a waste. I do agree with Alex that the recent comments plug in is wasted and useless. Top Comenters makes more sense for networking

  27. I used to use ping.in for pretty much everything I promote that is a blog or has an rss feed. But with wordpress its great they do all the pinging for you, although it is very smart to put a good list of sites to ping in your account settings.

  28. nice post, i think this is great info on how to ping the correct amount of times, i had this problem in the past and it was a hassle to fix, thanks for letting us in on the easy way.

  30. To all of those who talked about ‘internal linking’ being important to SEO, you have failed to recognise that you are linking internally when you create the link in the post itself. Therefore the pingback is not needed.

    This self pingback feature has always annoyed me. Now I know how to stop it. Thanks 🙂

  31. the pings look ugly, comments should flow like a conversation. the pings read like an elderly uncle, present during the conversation but uttering and spluttering about something completely different.

    robs latest published blog-post ………. Brighton Visual-Arts and Gallery Listings

  32. Yeah it’s really annoying when apart from those hundreds of comments the site gets pointlessly cluttered with trackbacks. Especialy if they’re only internal so without any *real* informational value.

  33. I’m more worried about keeping my blog looking clean than increasing SEO so self pinging is kind of a no-no for me. Thanks for the heads up on the plugin, this will save me some time.

  34. Although you can increase the number of page views and interconnect your blog posts if relevancy demands it, self pings can be also interpreted as disingenuous if increasing page rankings is your goal. I learned that while linking to posts of one’s own blog, don’t use http:// but instead use relative paths (basically removing “http” from the address string). No self pings will occur.

  35. As you stated the pinging “looks like its only me who ever comments on my blog. Moreover, it adds to the clutter in the comments section as self-pings are quite meaningless and useless to the audience.” If this happens quite a lot that it raises other to write about it, I wonder if it also should be pointed out that perhaps the blogger who finds himself “alone on the hilltop” that he or she should really concentrate on writing: strong grammar, diligent punctuation and engaging content. Seems to me that this along with the other helpful promo tools is a guarantee that others will be inspired to respond and expand the dialogue.

  36. I think that pinging your blog is worthless. It is far better to leave a few comments on other people blogs. Search engine spiders will find you in a metter of days after doing this.

  37. WordPress blogs pings itself automatically, no need to you go there and ping it. By the way, what ping services do you use on your blog? Just Ping-o-matic?

    Thaless latest published blog-post ………. Maverick Money Makers Reviewed – The Truth

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