Pingbacks and trackbacks often confuse many new WordPress users. Moderating these types of comments can be tricky, if you don't know what you're doing. Whenever somebody links back to one of your WordPress blog posts, you will get a pingback or trackback in the comment section.

Many WordPress beginners don't know whether to approve, trash or spam these comments. Understanding what you should do with these comments and what they are, is very important. Here's a quick look at what to do with Pingbacks and Trackbacks in WordPress.

<h2>What is a Pingback?</h2>

Pingbacks happen often and allow different types of software to communicate from one website to another. It will remotely write a comment whenever you create and publish a blog post, mention another post on your blog or somebody else links to one of your posts.

When this happens, the pingback will tell you where the link is coming from and display in your comment section. If you have all your comments held for moderation, you will need to handle this type of comment. 

<h2>What is a Trackback</h2>

A trackback is very similar to a pingback because it allows bloggers to communicate between blogs. However, this type of comment is more like one blogger telling another one that they think they may be interested in something. It's much like a response to a YouTube video.

When you write a post and somebody wants to leave a comment, instead, they can write a response on their blog and send you a trackback. Now, you have the option to display the trackback as a comment, which will include the title, an excerpt and a link back to the blog post they wrote in response. 

<h2>Is there a Difference Between Pingbacks and Trackbacks?</h2>

The biggest difference between the two is how they are created. Trackbacks have to be created manually, while pingbacks happen automatically. The other different between the two has to do with what type of content is sent. With a trackback, content is sent to your blog, while a pingback doesn't include any content. 

<h2>The Proper Way to Moderate Pingbacks and Trackbacks</h2>

There's no special trick to moderating pingbacks and trackbacks. It's a pretty easy process. For most bloggers, 99% of the pingbacks and trackbacks they receive are spam. It's a very easy way for those using blackhat and lazy SEO tricks to get a link from your blog to their website. 

For larger and more popular websites, pingbacks and trackbacks often come from content scrapers stealing articles off your blog. However, the 1% that are not spam may actually be helpful links from legitimate bloggers. This could help you figure out where you've been featured on the web. However, you will want to mark nearly all of your pingbacks and trackbacks as spam or disable them entirely.

<h2>Disabling Pingbacks and Trackbacks on Your WordPress Blog</h2>

If you want to disable the pingbacks and trackbacks, you can easily do it from your <strong>Settings &gt;&gt; Discussion</strong> menu. Just log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the discussion section of settings. 

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/PingbacksAndTrackbacks.png" alt="Pingbacks And Trackbacks" width="711" height="138" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6560" />

Just uncheck the box and save your changes. That's all it takes to disable your pingbacks and trackbacks. However, this will not disable it on existing WordPress posts. 

<h2>Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks on Existing WordPress Posts</h2>

If you want to disable the pingbacks and trackbacks on your existing blog posts in WordPress, you will need to log into your cPanel or admin area for your hosting company. Then, go to the phpMyAdmin section:

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/phpMyAdmin.png" alt="phpMyAdmin" width="358" height="106" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6561" />

Simply click on the "SQL" tab and you will get a screen that looks like this:

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SQLTab.png" alt="SQL Tab" width="409" height="333" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6562" />

Now, just enter the following query into the box and click the "Go" button. 

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/PingbackTrackbackQuery.png" alt="Pingback Trackback Query" width="384" height="83" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6563" />

That's all it takes and you will have disabled pingbacks and trackbacks on all your existing WordPress posts. 

This will make it much easier to sort through a large bulk of comments. Now, you won't have to worry about nearly as much spam and you can handle moderating the real comments much faster. You will be able to create more discussion on your site and users won't have to wait for you to sift through the garbage to approve their very real comments.