Blog and Ping explained by going to the movies.
Remember the 1990 movie Hunt for Red October starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin?
Just one ping
Captain Ramius: Re-verify our range to target… one ping only.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Captain, I – I – I just…
Captain Ramius: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Aye, Captain.
So if you’ve been blogging for a while you may have heard the term “ping”. But for newbies, hard to know what this really is and what it does and why too much in a short time isn’t good for your blog.
Pinging is what your blog does behind the scenes goes to notify search engines that something has been updated or added to your blog posts. Its is a very powerful part of blogging and should be used to maximize your blog’s exposure.
Its so powerful that it your blog tells or “pings” too many times in a short period of time, some search engines view this as excessive and may ban your site as a result. Yuck, that’s completely the opposite of what you want.
So most of us initially say, OK I won’t excessively ping.
But what you may not know is that WordPress automatically pings ANYTIME you update or edit a post.
This ping update may happen because of a new post or if you have just edited one of your posts. So if you were to edit 10 blog posts in an hour, WordPress would be pinging all along the way and not only could you be pinging 10 times an hour, if you’re like me and have to go BACK in to edit again, that would be another ping.
And what’s worse, while you are posting a post with a future scheduled date, your blog will ping the search engines that your blog is ready with new information. Why is this not good for your blog?
But when the search engine spiders visit your blog based on that ping they received, they will find nothing new since its a future scheduled post. They will interprete this situtaion that you are sending them unnecessary pings. And doing this thing unknowingly might get your blog banned.
But I’ve found a solution for this excessive pinging. Its an easy to install WordPress Plugin called MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer.
This plugin will automatically notify search engines ONLY when you make a new post.
MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer will limit excessive pinging by not sending any pings while you are editing or saving any scheduled posts. You can also set the minimum pinging duration and can add different pinging services with this. It uses a log system which can tell you the last 20 ping records that have come from your blog. Use this pinging plugin for wordpress for maximum security and to reduce excessive pinging problems.
And the best part, its a free plugin, so just click the link here to learn more about it and download it for yourself.
Happy Blogging -
2 comments
Comment by admin on September 7, 2009 at 8:38 pm
In case you’re not sure how to use it – load it in as a plugin and activate it. Then when you’re looking at the list – locate the ping optimizer and click on the link that says “adjust settings”.
Then all you do is confirm you want it to limit the number of pings and the maximum number of pings you would like to limit it to – I set it to 1 every 15 minutes.
Hope this helps.
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