Linkbacks are a method for Web authors, bloggers included, to be notified when another blogger links to one of their pages or posts. This allows authors to keep track of who is linking to their site and referring to their posts, and gives the author an idea of who is reading their blog in general. There are three different methods for accomplishing a linkback: Trackback, Pingback and sometimes Refback. All of these terms are often used interchangeably and refer to items in a section of the linked page displaying received notifications, usually along with a link.

Trackbacks are basically a way to show other bloggers that you have linked to a particular post in their blog. Most of the major blogging platforms support trackbacks and make it very easy to use them in your posts.

So what’s the difference between the three? As far as the average user is concerned, not much. Below is a basic, technical description of each method:

Trackback:

Code on a linking server examines added or updated content, extracts links, and sends an http post notification to the linked server for each found link. The notification includes the linking site name, post title, post excerpt, post URL, post ID number, and the IP address of the linking server.

Pingbacks:

Code on a linking server examines added or updated content, extracts links, an XML-RPC call notification to the linked server for each found link. The notification includes the linked post URL, the linking post URL and the IP address of the linking server.

Refback

Visitor to a linking site clicks on the link, and his browser takes him to the linked site. An http referrer value is the method of notification. No information is sent to the linking server.

Linkbacks are a useful method for drawing more readers to your blog. By using them, you may draw many of another bloggers’ loyal readers to your blog too!