When you link to a specific blog post (permalink), the person you link to, links back to you….tracks back to your story or post.
This is typically represented by a trackback list, found at the bottom of the post you linked to, with the most recent link to that post appearing at the top.
Pings are little messages, that you send to another blog, letting them know you have included a reference to one of their stories within your post.
For instance:
Recently I wrote about two cool tools Google offers that make my life easier:
Within my post, I mentioned a post Jessica Ewing had put on the Google blog, that explained the process in more detail;
and linked to her post using the words “adding personality to your Google homepage” within my post:
Because I use WordPress, I don’t need to ping the other blog; WordPress does it for me as soon as I link to the post.
So, the next day, I check Jessica’s post on the Google blog and voila…there is the link back to me; the track back to my post titled “Two useful Google tools for Journalists”
The only blogging platform that I have come across that does not support trackback is Blogger (weird, given they allow for trackbacks on their blogs), although it provides an option called backlinks.
Don’t get too excited thinking that trackbacks are seen by the search engines as links into your site; they are not, what trackbacks can do is encourage new readers to visit your blog.
For instance, if someone writes a story that is related to your post, it makes sense to link to them, as this gives your readers additional information. It follows then, that people who read the other blog may be interested in reading what you have to say as well; trackbacks are brilliant for this!
If this was useful, please let me know. 
Brilliant!
Just discovered Andy Beard has an easy to follow “How To” for Blogger users – take a look at Haloscan – How To Send a Trackback with Blogger
The tacking back wou8ld post in my blog. why so?
I pretty much knew this, but looking at the screenshots it occurred to me that a heading like “Links to this post” with just the post title is a lot clearer than “Trackbacks” and the messy style that a lot of blogs use, with random excerpts that are almost never readable.
Even worse is when the trackbacks are mixed in with comments, it just makes it really hard to read the comments.
What I HAVE been wondering about is why some blogs (e.g. Live Spaces) get tons of trackback spam? I just had to turn it off on that one.
Hey Gordon,
running so so behind – sorry!
Yeah, I agree with you, ‘Links to this post’ is way more simpler and would solve a lot of problems for new bloggers who see words like that and just get confused. But alas, the jargon is there and we just have to get used to it. I think I might try and do something here about it as it does make sense.
There are plugins (depending on your blog platform of choice) that separate the trackbacks and the comments, so I might do a post on that – thanks for the idea.
I haven’t used Live Spaces, sorry, but I have noticed that once you’ve been blogging for a decent amount of time, and your traffic increases, it gets worse. Unfortunate, but I guess part of the growth process.
With Akismet (on WordPress) I’ve found it is pretty good at grabbing the spammy trackbacks; a few still get in, but not as many as I’ve seen elsewhere.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving some food for thought
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