Header graphic for print
Real Lawyers Have Blogs On the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, & baseball

Trackbacks are comments

Is 'trackbacks' a needed term in the world of blogging? LexBlog's IT Director, Jesse Newland, thinks not. Trackbacks are comments is his argument, let's not confuse the world by using the term trackbacks.

Comments are comments are comments. Trackbacks are comments. Readers want to see what other people have to say about your post, they couldn’t care less if someone made the comment on your blog, blogged about it themselves, emailed it to you, or muttered it in their sleep.

In A Beginner’s Guide to TrackBack, Ben and Mena [Trott - founders of Six Apart] ramble for a bit and then get to the point and say:

“This is a form of remote comments.”

……Let’s quit making blogging any more confusing than it should be.

Jesse may have a point. Darren Rowse, the king of professional blogging, combines comments and trackbacks on his Pro Blogger blog. Posts on other blogs referencing Darren's posts are automatically displayed inline with comments, just as if they inserted in the comment field on Darren's blog.

  • http://www.kansasfamilylawblog.com Grant Griffiths

    OK, I have to disagree on this one. Trackbacks are trackbacks and comments are comments. You can comment on a blog and you can post about it on your own blog and provide a trackback. The trackback informs the blogger you are posting about, know about the post. In my opinion, I think both are important.

  • Bill Gardner

    Sadly I find Trackback management a bear and rarely use the feature. There must be an easier way, such as automatic Trackback pinging.

  • http://vancouverlawlib.blogspot.com/ Steve Matthews

    I'm on side with this. Pick your poison, and provide commentary as you see fit… makes sense to me.

  • Jack

    There is a HUGE difference between a trackback and comment: When someone pings you, they almost always also link to you. Thus, the person pinged gets not only the benefit of criticism, but also some added traffic (and page rank!) from the trackback and accompanying link. Indeed, almost everyone considers it poor form to “ping” someone without also linking to them.
    Thus,
    a comment = no added traffic
    a trackback = added traffic and page rank
    It's a no-brainer!

  • http://jnewland.com Jesse

    I, too, agree that both are important. The traffic from trackbacks is nice, but the pagerank benefit is negligible because of the widespread use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute on trackback links.
    It all comes down to this: Trackbacks are simply a way to cite remote blogger's comment on your posts on your own blog.
    My beef is that separating the two into two lists, 'Comments' and 'Trackbacks' is confusing to the reader. *That's* my point.

  • http://www.kansasfamilylawblog.com Grant Griffiths

    Exact reason why I require my approval of all comments on my blogs. So comments like the one about Clinton above don't make it in.

  • http://www.buniek.com/ Telian Adlam

    Posts on other blogs referencing Darren's posts are automatically displayed inline with comments, just as if they inserted in the comment field on Darren's blog.

    Some of my opinions have already been expressed above (see comment #1), but I needed to clear something up with regards to Darren's blog.
    He currently uses WordPress as his blogging software and, by default, WordPress displays comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks inline with one another.
    This was not intentionally planned by Darren (I assume), and there are a few WP users trying to find ways to separate them.

    …such as automatic Trackback pinging.

    WordPress incorporates a feature called pingback which allows you to automatically notify any website linked within your post.
    If the referenced website allows pings, your entry will appear like a trackback on their blog. This generally only works with other WordPress powered blogs.