What is Pinging?

The word ‘ping’ has a long history both off and on the Internet. In 1983, Mike Muus wrote a tool to check if other sites were up and accessible (http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html)

Somewhat like a sonar ping in the submarine movies, a single packet was used to see if there was anything out there, so it’s very appropriate that he named it after the sonar ping.

This small information packet is used to see if a site is up and running – but it can be used for more. WordPress uses it to tell a site that it has something of interest – a brief advertising message, as it were.

This mini ad doesn’t do much more than say ‘come visit me’, but for blogging, it’s quite effective – many sites list the blogs that ping them, and search engines visit THOSE sites.

In other words, for the effort of a single ping, you could get a listing on a high-ranking website!

Some have abused this system by artificially pinging, or pinging too often. This means that the listings are temporary, since with hundreds or thousands pinging every hour, yours will soon scroll by.

But right now, pinging is positive, it does work, and for now, it’s a great way to advertise your site without effort.

And the good news – WordPress includes it at no cost!

In the Admin section panels “Options; Writing; Update Services” you have a list you can edit to enter a list of ping sites. The original entry, for pingomatic, is from the fellows that developed WordPress, and should be included in everyone’s ping list. It takes care of the majority of advertising, but you may wish to include more.

A listing of ping sites that are commonly used can be found at http://activeblogging.com/info/wordpress-ping-list/ – whether you use them all is up to you, since each ping slows down you system when posting, and some sites are redundant (eg, pingomatic calls others for you).

So if you wish a quick way to get noticed, and don’t feel like submitting your site to search engines, remember WordPress, and use it for your site – with a full ping list!