Ping Services: An Updated List for Your Blog
(Scroll down to go instantly to the list of ping services that I currently use.)
One of the benefits of using a blog rather than traditional web site is the ability to notify other services when you have a new blog post.
The update services feature will send a ping packet to each of the predefined ping services. This can be useful for many purposes:
- Tracking conversations and links, increasing visibility. Example: Technorati.
- Maintaining a list of most recently updated blog. If other bloggers use BlogRolling.com on their blog, your blog will show on top of the list.
- Display newly updated blogs, such as in weblogs.com
- Syndicate new content for their users. Yahoo uses pings for this purpose.
It is not only for traffic, but also to extend conversation. You will never know how people will find your blog and when they will link to you in their blogs. If you are not on these web services your blog is less visible.
New blog services come and go, but only a few of them really matter. Keeping the ping list up to date can be annoying. You can use a ping server such as Ping-O-Matic to notify popular services. Ping-O-Matic does not include every blog services though. You can use Ping-O-Matic to send pings manually.
A second option is to grab a comprehensive ping list and feed those URLs to your blog software.
There are several precautions though. If you send notification to ping servers and each individual service, you may end up pinging the same services several times. While these services may choose to just ignore duplicate pings, they may decide differently. They may even mark your blog as spam.
Finally, if your host doesn’t allow pinging, and you are using FeedBurner, disable update services option on your blog and turn on the PingShot feature in FeedBurner. It will ping those services on your behalf.
Don’t use more than one method, as they are redundant and provide no extra benefit at all.
Here is a list of English ping service(s) that I recommend for your blog, if you prefer to send pings from your own blog. I will update this regularly.
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
(Yes, right now only one as it pings all useful services at once.)
Return to WordPress How-to — Tips and Tricks to Work with WordPress.
Return to Blog Tips for a Better Blog — Blog Building University.
Blog Building University features tips, techniques and strategies on starting and growing your moneymaking / business blog. Subscribe to get fresh content delivered to you daily!
