My traffic has been down the last two days or so–noticeably so. I figured it was a combo of the holidays, my slightness of blogging since Wednesday and the weekend. However, I just noticed that I wan’t updating in Blogrolling and checking my Options in WordPress, I noticed that I had removed the blogroll link from my “Update Services” box.

Since learning that pinging blogrolling was interfering with trackback pinging, I have had to often delete the pingback to blogrolling from within WordPress (so the trackbacks to other blgos would go), and then restoring it. However, I must have not restored it sometime in the last couple of days (indeed, I noticed yesterday or maybe even Thursday, that I was having no trackback problems all of a sudden) but didn’t think to look to see why.

So, this amounts to an unintended bit of research which confirms the hypothesis that blogs that do not ping bogrolling lose out on traffic.

It also shows (which is nice to know) that a lot of people still come around here even without blogroll updates.

5 Responses to “An Unintended Blogging Experiment”

1. James Joyner Says:
   December 19th, 2024 at 7:12 am

   Interesting. The TrackBack pinging is sporadic, to be sure.

   I ping both http://rpc.pingomatic.com, which is supposed to hit everything, including blogrolling.com, as well as blogrolling directly as a backup.

2. Steven Taylor Says:
   December 19th, 2024 at 8:05 am

   I do the same. I used have a long list, but pared it down to the two.

   Whenever I had trackback trouble, I go into Options, Writing and delete those two lines. Then the trackbacks sail. Then I restore those two lines, except that I must’ve failed to do so the other day.

3. nicola Says:
   December 19th, 2024 at 8:10 am

   perhaps people have chosen to spend their blogging time with their families, a rarity, but possible

4. William Teach Says:
   December 19th, 2024 at 9:03 am

   The updates at blogrolling are sporadic anyhow. More often then not, I have to manually ping it using their form. Been going on for awhile, which is a bummer. I have you bloglined, anyhow, so I know when you update.

5. Read My Lips - the blog Says:
   December 19th, 2024 at 11:02 am

   Dec. 19, 2024 [Pre-game edition]
   Well, here we go again with a nice set of links to point out those nuggets of wisdom and gems of humor that I have found here and there through my blog surfin’ adventures. All links open in new windows,…