Comments on: Backlinks Are Better Than Trackbacks

By: Singpolyma

Singpolyma — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:44:00 +0000

"there's no askismet in blogger"

nor are there trackbacks... haloscan has an anti-spam system of their own.

As per non-splogs spamming this way, again I point to comments. What's to keep me from commenting here and linking to five of my blog posts in the comment? You could remove it, but you can remove trackbacks.

There are still two extra-nice things about trackbacks:

1) On good systems (ie WordPress), it's automatic
2) You can also find posts that may be related or even mention yours, but may not have a direct link (because they're not ABOUT yours)

Oh, and plus it means we're not relying on a third party (google) for our tracking... we can do it ourselves :)⌘

By: Avatar

Avatar — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 10:52:00 +0000

th tags reference, was just htat a tiny reference.

and don´t confuse social withactivism.. they are not the same thing either, and in the case of backlinks, the social aspect is a reflection of them bieng displayed, it is reactive only to the readers and supplied by a automated process in a trackback the human ellemts generates the bridge too, not the machine. it carries a intention from the start, be it bad or good.

anyway in the end i do think backlinks is a better system⌘

By: Deepak

Deepak — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:29:00 +0000

I've never been able to understand or appreciate backlinks/trackbacks; never gave much importance to them. :...(Err.. Don't know whether I should be sad or happy about that!)⌘

By: Aditya

Aditya — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:55:00 +0000

I've updated the post with a few more points!

"it is more of a personal activism"

But so are backlinks. You can't say that backlinks add the 'social' element since they look and work just like trackbacks, except for the separate housing (as I mentioned in my previous comment).

Tags are something different. They don't point to individual posts, but a broad generalised and related word to the context of the post. It'll be wrong to compare backlinks/trackbacks to tags.

Backlinks were Google's way of making sure irrelevant trackbacks don't show up. I must confess that it was an absolutely spot on foresight on Google's part not to adopt trackbacks and go in this direction! :)⌘

By: Avatar

Avatar — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:24:00 +0000

Given i talked to you about trackbacks being dead too just 24hrs ago, i must say part of the why they are mostly dead, and they SHOULD be left for dead beyond what have you already stated.

the thing is that is not only something that atracts spammig of the most common order, as stephen has said, askimet resolves that, but there is no askimet in blogger. and there is no askimet in a lot of the other blogger patforms, but my main problem with trackbacking is beyond spamming, my problem with it is that right now it is just a overkill, and not only that, it is something that still depends on a proactive action and that unlike cross context reference (folksonomy-taxonomy) the trackbacks are a one-way tool, it lacks what makes tags work.it lacks a true social factor.. it is more of a personal activism (sort of speak) that anything else, and from the moment the post enters in your archive it is for the most part dead already, no ones talks about trackback anymore, no ones really cares, and much less in blogger where you got a Machine reference link index (backlinks) that are automatic and that by being generic, and automated, they actually can do their job way better...

Now i must go litsen to a song or something, just talking about track backs made me want go to sleep... :P⌘

By: Aditya

Aditya — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:59:00 +0000

"Reverse-blogsearch is nice, but it does not find everything."

Actually, Google does find links from non-blogger & non-wordpress blogs as well. I've seen backlinks show up from platforms like Drupal or ExpressionEngine. So I think Google is doing a good job there. Things can definitely improve, but so can everything, and Google is improving everyday :)

As far as Akismet goes, I did mention it in the post. But the problem doesn't come from links from spam blogs. What if I sent a trackback to 5 of your posts, completely unrelated in topic to this one? It won't be caught by Akismet (since it's not a spam blog), and for all it knows, I could be linking to all 5 of your posts, so as far as justified linking goes, you can't have a case with just a system. I know Akismet is monitored by people as well, but I guess you see my point here :)

It's better to create trackbacks from existing links in posts, rather than have a separate system of sending and housing them independent of the post.⌘

By: kca

kca — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 03:21:00 +0000

Just to say that I am relly,really impressed by your comment layout...;)⌘

By: Singpolyma

Singpolyma — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:48:00 +0000

I must disagree. With a good anti-SPAM (A-K-I-S-M-E-T) system one doesn't have to worry too much more than one does for simple commenting about SPAM.

Reverse-blogsearch is nice, but it does not find everything.⌘

By: Aditya

Aditya — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 13:56:00 +0000

I was actually going to offer tabbed searching of more than one blog, and a Google search in the next update to the Native search. However, Google's AJAX search and Hoctro's (I think) documentation of how to implement it seems to have people implementing that instead of my hack, so unless some serious requests pop in, I don't know if I'll update the hack.

I don't want to let it die, since it's been my favourite hack, but I rather put time into something people really want. So only time will tell! Thanks for the suggestion though! :)⌘

By: Sumesh

Sumesh — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 13:45:00 +0000

Adithya, can you add a google web search function to your native search in blogger? it would be really cool to have that.⌘