To those who may legitimately not know this: if you are going to trackback a post, it is considered common courtesy in the Blogosphere for your post to contain an actual link to the post which you are tracbacking.
On a fairly regular basis I get trackbacks to find that the person does not actual link to my site. (Indeed, there are at least two frequent violators, but one from today doesn’t have an e-mail address on their site, and I am refraining for public finger-pointing at the moment).
In short: hat tips and links are appreciated, while trackbacks without links are annoying (especially since you get a link on my page since I use inline tracbacks).
Given that I always assume that this is an innocent oversight I never have bothered to erase those trackbacks, as I know is the stated policy of some blogs.
Anyway, consider this a friendly reminder/request from your friendly neighborhood blogger.
June 30th, 2024 at 3:20 pm
After blogging for six months, this happened to me for the first time yesterday. I went to the guy’s site and guess what? No link, no mention! Very annoying.
June 30th, 2024 at 6:32 pm
Happens with some regularity on my site, and I’ve recently taken to deleting those trackbacks. It’s someone I don’t know essentially saying, “Hey, I’m going to advertise on your site without asking permission, without offering to pay, and without even the common courtesy of linking to you.”
That irritates me no end. One of the things that bothers me about it is this: email me and let me know that you’ve written something on the same topic that I might be interested in. I have a very liberal linking policy–I would, in all probability, give the person a link that was better than the trackback anyway.
A little courtesy goes a long way.
(Er, sorry about that. It’s one of my current sore points.)
June 30th, 2024 at 6:35 pm
No problem–it’s why I brought it up!
June 30th, 2024 at 6:48 pm
Well, now that you brought it up so nicely, I grant thee permission to delete them.
Carry on.
July 1st, 2024 at 1:36 am
I have never, to my knowledge, given a trackback without a link to the post. But here’s a related “ethical” question:
What if the trackbacked post includes only either a cursory mention of the original post or is only tangentially related?
July 1st, 2024 at 5:20 am
Normally, in my experience, the person has found a story on my site, but then failed to give any credit or notice of that fact.
July 2nd, 2024 at 7:36 pm
Christopher – As long as my blog is linked to in their post, they can’t blog about whatever they want.
June 30th, 2024 at 3:59 pm
The negative example
In which your gentle author is not really referencing a particular weblog in the course of posting this item. (Don’t do that)…
June 30th, 2024 at 7:35 pm
Blogger Etiquette.
Steven Taylor at Poliblog has blogger etiquette on his mind; using trackback without linking to the post on your site.
July 18th, 2024 at 12:56 am
TrackBack Etiquette
There isn’t much in a google search on TrackBack etiquette, but I did find one blog that summed it up nicely:
“To those who may legitimately not know this: if you are going to trackback a post, it is considered common courtesy in the Blogosphere f…
August 30th, 2024 at 9:37 pm
Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask
There are plenty of good guides to blogging and I was going to add my $0.02 to the pile. It’s the thing to do once your blog reaches a certain age, and I figure turning one is about the right time. However I’m going to break with blogosphere traditio…
August 6th, 2024 at 8:43 pm
[...] Stephen Taylor adds some useful extra tips to this list (although I recommend rereading my point 28 too). He also has posts on Blogging Etiquette, building traffic and the 5 technical things he wished he done before starting his blog. [...]