What ARE trackbacks, anyway?

A week or so ago, I quit trying to figure out what trackbacks are, and went ahead and authorized them on my blog.

I did so mainly so that when I got some, maybe I could figure out what they are.

But I haven’t gotten any bites. I’ve had 700 comments in the past week (a definite record; HALF that number of letters to the editor would be a really big week), but no trackbacks. And yeah, I’ve looked up definitions, but they fail to enlighten me.

They have something to do with blogs referring to each other. I refer to other blogs all the time, and they refer to mine, but still no "trackbacks."

Can anybody help me out? Of course, I’m not dismissing the possibility that once I DO find out what they are, I won’t want to have anything to do with them. We’ll see.

8 thoughts on “What ARE trackbacks, anyway?”

  1. Laurin

    Brad,
    Trackbacks are a way for you to know when other folks link to your blog. It posts the link almost as a comment. I’ll show you.

  3. Laurin

    Rather, it lets you know when folks link to a particular post on your blog. To create trackback, you copy the trackback link into the appropriate field in the blogging interface.

  5. Brad Warthen

    Thanks. So should that happen whenever anybody links to it? People are linking to it all the time, usually. Maybe you’re the first in the last few days, since I activated the feature. Or — this is probably it — the other person has to approve the trackback, too. I think I did read that.

  6. Snooper

    Not exactly true. It’s NSA’s way of keeping tabs on what is posted on this site in case one of you are a “person of interest” and you know what that means…

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