Pingback is when an article requests links. Trackback is when a user sends links to an article.

I think?

Trackback was first, and then Simon (and others) over at incutio.com came up with the idea of making a process that is a little more automatic.

Trackbacks are kind of a way to make relational links among weblogs. You are basically sending information about your entry to another site and saying, “Hey, I wrote an entry that is related to yours, here is a little snippet from it.”

Pingbacks are a way of showing how weblogs are connected. It takes the links in your entry and tries to ping the originating server of those links. Saying to that server, “Hey we linked to you.”

Trackback is more conscious of the admin, and it is often more relevant to the pinged entry. Pingbacks are quite nice on following how an idea or piece of information has spread throughout the web.

From the pMachine forums

Coolness. Now I wonder if Rick and the gang plan on implementing Pingback in EE.

Les! Off topic, but still.

Heads up: check out this article.

I plan on writing a Pingback Vs. Trackback (non-tech speak) article. Stay tuned.

EE seems like it’s a powerful publishing solution. It might have pingbacks already and just need them turned on in the settings or config’d for them. I’d suggest email EE and see if you already have pingback support.

Jason, I’m officially a member of the EE Support Team. I’d probably know if EE has pingback features.

heh...point taken.

Here’s one the more straightforward explanations I’ve seen on pingback and trackback:

In the pingback model, the client does the work of finding the pingback server, and then invokes a simple XML-RPC call to that server with the two URIs. In the Trackback model, the client has to do all the work of finding the trackback server, which includes mapping the permalink to the trackback ID by parsing some RDF. The client then has to call the server using the constructed URI, which then (depending on the implementation) has to map this ID back to the permalink.

BTW: Here’s an interesting comparison chart showing the features of the mainstream blogs and which are utilizing pingback and trackback,

Don’t mean to intrude, but CNET News.com has now made its TrackBack/Pingback support public.

http://news.com.com/TrackBack+and+Pingback+supported+by+CNET+News.com/2030-9368_3-5462850.html

Let us know if we can improve it. Feedback welcome via TrackBack to the page above or an email via the form at the URL above.

John Roberts
CNET News.com (http://www.news.com)
Product Development
415.344.2836
first name then dot then last name @ cnet dot com

LOL,

Say, I really like that car you’re driving.

You don’t mind if I paste a few advertisements to it, do ya?

(busts out a gluestick and a Domino’s flyer)

Damn, the spammers are busy today. That last one was particularly annoying as they’re using various free hosting services so I was loathe to ban the root URL outright. If I get any more like that, though, I’ll do just that.