How do you ping your blog?

[nudreamer]

Hello,
I have my 2 blogs to ping. What is the best way to do that?

nudreamer

[Adriana]

Are your blogs WordPress? If so, every time you post a new entry the blog automatically pings http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

If you want to add other places to ping, from your dashboard go to Settings -->Writing -->scroll down the page until you see Update Services. Add your other sites you want to ping there, and click "save changes". You are done.

[KarenMcG]

Oh cool, nudreamer, thank you for your question re: pinging.

And Adriana, thank you for your answer.

I've wondered about pinging, too.


Karen

[TheWealthSquad]

You want to make sure you have something like PingMaximizer installed as a plug in. (not sure if that's the official name for it). It controls your blog from pinging everytime you update a post.

If you don't use Wordpress, you can ping a site using different websites like Pingomatic and pingoat.

Also if you have an RSS feed, don't forget to submit it to the RSS directories as well.

[ChristineCobb]

You want to make sure you have something like PingMaximizer installed as a plug in. (not sure if that's the official name for it). It controls your blog from pinging everytime you update a post.



That plugin is MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

[TheWealthSquad]

MaxBlogPress was the one I was thinking of. I use it on mine but was heading out the door so didn't have a chance to look it up.

Any of them that controls when your blog pings would work fine.

One thing I do sometimes to help drive traffic is to ping a site that I comment on. Especially if mine is very high on the list. I also do some social bookmarking if the post is good too. Share and build reciprocity :)

[Henrik Flensborg]

Ping" is the name of an old utility that simply sends an empty request to an IP address (or web site), and waits for a reply. It is used to troubleshoot issues with networks.

Often web site advertising will work by paying you a fraction of a cent for every person who visits your site, and in theory sees their ad. If you "ping" a web site - that is use a program to send an empty message to it, that will show up as a "visit" to the site, even though nobody else came to it or saw the ads. So a program like "ping-o-matic" can make it LOOK like you have had hundreds of visitors by sending "pings" to your computer. However the use of such a program is illegal since you are falsely taking money from the advertisers.

Sorry to say it, but that advice is way off since it's obvious that you don't know what you're talking about.

Just to make it very clear; using Ping-o-matic is NOT illegal as you claim it is because it does not do what you say it does.

Also, I have never heard of companies paying for ICMP ECHO requests - they are obviously not HTTP requests and are thus never seen by anyone. And why pay for something that nobody can see.

Yes, it's true that ping is a utility to send ICMP ECHO requests to see if an ip-address is alive (or at least responding to ICMP ECHO requests)

But when we, as this is the case, is talking about pinging a blog then it has nothing to do with ICMP ECHO requests.

Pinging when it comes to blogs is to notify other sites that you've updated your site with a new post - it's typically blogdirectories/search engines that want to know that new content is availble so they can come by with a spider a grab it.

So, as TheWealthSquad said, use pingomatic or pingoat if your blog doesn't do it automatically for you.

[billdotd]

It controls your blog from pinging everytime you update a post.

I didn't know WP sent a ping on a page/post update, but why wouldn't I want an update to send a ping? Doesn't that invite the Googlebot to check the site? And isn't that a good thing?

[deannatroupe]

billdotd,
This is just a hunch, but I think the reason you want to control the number of times your blog sends a ping is so that you don't get accused of spamming by sending too many pings. Make sense?

[AlexNewell]

It is a matter of proportion Bill. There are some people who fuss away at every post and polish every comma for extra artistic effect.

The Ping plugin was designed to avoid such "post polishers" from appearing to ping services to be over pinging the networks.

A few years ago there was a fair amount of "ping spamming" going on and I guess having a ping plugin made some sense. It's debatable now if it is useful.

As Henrik implies in his post above a ping is just like a little bell that rings to get attention and the search engines nowadays are so sophisticated I wonder if ping is all that useful?

[deannatroupe]

You know, I've been wondering that myself.

[DianaWalker]

Bill, from what I understand, I think we would not want it to ping again and again, in cases where we may find a spelling error on a previous post, and correct it, and re-save it.
Or add a sentence, or make a change in an Affiliate link. I think if I understand it correctly, that we don't want the same page or post to be re-saved and re-pinged over and over.
I have not implemented the safeguard against this, but MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer that Chris and TheWealthSquad are talking about, I believe will control over-pinging.

Diana

[Lynn Terry]

Interesting discussion!

I never give pinging a second thought. I have services listed in WP and I know it pings those services every time I post & publish... but other than that I don't really put any thought into it.

Pinging was a hot topic back in... 2005? I wonder just how effective it is these days. Anyone know for sure the direct benefits of pinging in our current landscape?

[billdotd]

I was wondering about adding ping services - which ones do you add? Pingomatic is the default for WP - would adding others be of any value?

Thanks!

[billdotd]

And thanks to everyone for giving some reasons why I would want to control my pings - I am a "post polisher" for sure (or maybe my typing is just so bad I have to do lots of edits!).