What is Trackback Spam and How to Deal with It

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Affiliate links may be used in this post. If you click on one and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage at no extra cost to you. Read my full disclosure policy here.

How to Deal with Trackback Spam

Dealing with trackback spam can sometimes be a hassle. Trackbacks, along with pingbacks, allow bloggers to notify each other when they link to a post. That sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately, trackbacks are used frequently by spammers to send trackbacks from spam websites.

Affiliate links may be used in this post. If you click on one and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage at no extra cost to you. Read my full disclosure policy here.

Ugh!

Recently, I looked over my newest blog comments so that I could reply to readers and was excited to see a comment on a post I wrote about using scripture to survive devastating grief (this was on my faith blog, not this one…probably obvious, huh? 🙂 ). That post has been super popular in the past but hasn’t gotten a lot of traction lately, so I looked forward to clicking over and hopefully being able to help or ‘talk’ with someone grieving. But instead of a comment, I found this:

I knew right away that trackback from an internet marketing company probably wasn’t valid to my grief scripture post. This video will show you a little more about it, how to identify trackback spam, and what to do with it if you get it.

Disable Trackback Spam in WordPress

It’s possible to go ahead and disable trackbacks in WordPress. You might want to consider this as trackbacks are now mostly used by spammers to send fake ones. Even if you use Akismet like I do, some trackbacks can still make their way through.

WordPress allows you to turn off trackbacks so that you won’t receive them at all:

-Go to Settings >> Discussion

-Uncheck the box next to ‘Allow link notifcations from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbakcs) on new articles’

That’s quick and easy. If you do keep them on, be sure to follow the steps in the video above to determine which are real and which are spam and how to deal with them correctly.

Let me know if you have any questions!

P.S. If you haven’t started a blog yet but want to, sign up in the form below for my Free 7 day email course, You’re Not too Old to Start a Blog and Live Your Dream. It’ll teach you all the tech and steps you need to get through to get your blog up and running all with clear direction and my support along the way (as much or as little help for me as you want/need).