Trackback Spam - Blogger Etiquette Breach
Category: Navel Gazing...
Posted Sunday, August 29, 2004 at 10:42 PM [GMT-6]

I discovered the first instance of trackback spam on the Gazette earlier today. If you haven't run into this phenomenon yet, that's my term (perhaps someone else has a better one) for a blogger who sends a trackback ping to one of your posts, without actually linking to the post on his or her blog.

It may seem like a pretty harmless practice, and in the cosmic scope of things, I suppose it is. I'm not sure how many people actually follow trackback links; I always follow them on the Gazette, but rarely do on other blogs that I read. But the practice is also a breach of blogger etiquette, because it is designed to send traffic in one direction only: away from your blog and to the pinger's blog, without any reciprocity.

In the example I found today, the other blogger's post was at least related to the topic of my post. But there may have also been some commercial intent, in that the offending blogger seemed to be marketing the product that was the subject of my post. (I'm being intentionally vague here, because I deleted the trackback and the notice before checking it out very thoroughly.)

If you're a blogger, my gentle advice is just to use a little common sense and apply the Golden Rule: if you want traffic from another blog, offer something in return. A one-way trackback will not make you many new friends.