Trackback
Let’s assume you’ve commented on a post on someone else’s blog, and you want your response to be available on your blog as well. To do that you want to write a post on your blog and then track back to the other post. If the blog decides to allow your trackback you will then have that comment displayed (only as a title though) and a link plus excerpt to your blog.
Pingback
Pingback is by definition the reverse of trackback; however, they are automated and also use a different coding. Pingback can also be displayed as a comment, which will include a link to a blog or website that has content on your blog.
Trackback and Pingback moderation
Within the comment moderation area you will find trackback and pingback comments. Usually most of those could be spam, but it’s a good idea to look at them carefully to see if they are spam or not. Always designate spam as spam so in the future you won’t be notified of it. Pingbacks can also prevent or aid you in identifying content theft (as long as it is word-for-word) as the links are at times stolen too, verbatim.
Trackback is helpful only when the blog or website that links to your content is legitimate, adds valuable content or a fresh new look at whatever your website’s/blog’s content is all about, so this should always be considered non-spam.
Disabling spam trackback and self pinging
Let’s look at self pinging for a few seconds. If you link to your own articles in your website, you will find that WP will send you a notification – a ping – that informs you that “someone” is linking to your content. That someone is you, so there is not a lot of value in those notifications. Therefore, you want to use the No Self Pings plugin to disable this inconvenience.
For all other pingback and trackback notifications you’ll want to check your settings, the discussion tab and there you want to make sure that “Allow link notifications from other blogs” is unchecked. This only works for future posts. Not for posts you’ve already written.