What are Pingback Comments? Should I approve them on my WordPress posts?

Simply having a blog is not enough. It needs regular updates to stay alive and popular in the blog world. Posting an article at regular intervals, replying to comments, following back if a blogger has followed your blog and giving back links to those who link to you are some of the means by which you maintain a healthy blog and good relationships with your online peers.

When you publish a blog post, visitors leave comments on them out of which some comments are sheer spam and nothing else. But there are some comments which look like spam but are genuine. So, just be careful when you are dealing with such ones.

Pingback comments, also referred to as track backs are a form of automated comments on your blog page or post which are created when another WordPress blog links to that specific page or post.

When you publish a new article, WordPress makes an effort to ping all the websites that your post has linked to i.e. your WordPress website is informing others that you have given a link to their site. So, when you receive a ping back, it simply means that someone else has linked to one of your article or pages.

The ping backs practically offer no benefits, except for the fact that you come to know that someone has linked to you.
As these trackbacks offer no benefits whatsoever, do not approve them on your blog or website. A link is created back to the linking website, if you happen to approve them. But know that it’s a worthless link from the search engine view point. Also, your readers do not get anything good from the trackbacks making your comments look terrible.

To summarize, pingback comments offer no value at all even if they are approved on your blog, except that you know who has linked you. So, avoid them and keep your blog clean, interesting and genuine.