How To Send a Trackback PingHere's a little blogging 101. First, sign up with
Haloscan and have them put comments and trackbacks on your site. Then turn off the comments in blogger (Under Settings/Comments choose Hide). When you're done, your posts should initially look like mine, ending with the name and time posted. Underneath that you'll see:
Comment (0) | Trackback (0)
Now, design a post that links to another blogger's post. For example, two posts down I linked to Captain Ed's post on Steven Spielberg's next movie, so we'll use that as the example. Open up a new browser window or tab, and go to Haloscan. You may need to login with your username and password. Now click on "Manage Trackback" and then "Send a Trackback Ping". Note the form that you have to fill in:
As you can see, the form has already filled in the first two lines for you, with your blog name and URL. Unfortunately, you can't use that URL, you have to use the actual permalink URL on the individual post, which is found by clicking on the time of the post. In this case, it's:
http://www.brainster.blogspot.com/2005_07_03_
brainster_archive.html#112092551248647552
So copy that from the address bar and paste in into the second box. Title's pretty obvious; my title for the post was Reel Stuff. Your excerpt is where you have a chance to be a little creative. Remember, the object of using Trackback is to get visitors to travel to your site, so you want to put the most intriguing part of your post in the Excerpt. In the Reel Stuff post, I'd suspect that's this segment:
As it happens, I read "Vengeance", the book on which the film is based, about a week after 9-11.So I copy and paste that segment into the Haloscan form.
Now comes the absolute trickiest part of the form, the part that more people screw up than anything else. See the "URLs to Ping"? You may think that's just the Permalink on Captain Ed's post:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004911.php
But it's not. You have to find the Trackback URL for the post, which in Captain Ed's case is given at the end of the post:
Different blogs may have the Trackback URL in different places. On Blogger blogs with Haloscan, it's inside the Trackback (0) link; click on that to find the Trackback URL.
Okay, now we've completed the form, it's time to click on "Ping Now". If you've done it right, you should see the following message:
Trackback Etiquette: Only send trackback pings to posts which you have actually linked with your post. Don't forget, you're getting a link on that other person's blog; it's only fair that you give them a link from yours as well. When you see that somebody has trackbacked to one of your posts (always a bit of a thrill for smaller blogs), make a point to surf over to that person's post. You may find that they have more information on the subject, or perhaps they have disagreed with you. My general principle then is to update my original post with something like "Third Wave Dave has more here" and link to Dave's post.
Trackback Trick: I call this one the Instaleech. Say you see that Instapundit has just now linked one of Captain Ed's posts. Quickly compose a post linking to Ed's and send a trackback ping. Now everybody coming over to Ed's post from Professor Reynolds' site will see a link to your blog. That typically will result in a hundred visitors or more to your blog, especially if you get the first trackback on that post. I don't think there's anything unethical about it, but I only do it when the subject is something I'm interested in blogging on anyway. Let's face it, if I get visitors based on a link to a nanotechnology post, those folks are not going to become regular readers of my blog, because I never discuss nanotech here. On the other hand, if I link to a post on heroes, I just might get some regular readers, given that heroes is a topic frequently discussed here.
Note: Much of the above discussion applies only to Blogger blogs with Haloscan comments and trackbacks. Moveable Type blogs handle trackback automatically when the post is made.
