TrackBacks Are Dying

For awhile, the TrackBack was a popular tool that let one blogger let another know they are linking to them. Further, it let bloggers embed snippets of posts on the posts they mentioned. CNET even for awhile adopted the technology on all of their stories. No more. Yahoo even tested it too. Finally, Six Apart submitted it as a standard a few months back.

These days, however, the TrackBack feels irrelevant. Sebastian Kiel agrees with me. So does Jeff Harrell. It's been replaced by little widgets that have the same effect. You'll notice that all of my posts have a chicklet that show the number of links and diggs. This is powered by Feedburner.

However, there's more here. I think blogging has matured as a medium. We're not as obsessed with blogging or Technorati rankings as much as we used to be. Take a look at charts below. The number of mentions of the word blogs is largely flat the last six months. The universe has expanded. We have YouTube, Twitter, social networks and on and on. Blogging continues and is strong but it's part of something bigger. That's a big change.

 

Posts that contain Blogs per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Comments

[Azmeen]

Trackbacks were nice, however, it's now used more for spamming rather than giving legitimate feedback. I feel Pingback is a much better protocol than trackback.

You can read more about pingback on wikipedia.

[Kris Patel]

Flitting and twitting through my daily reads doesn't really urge me to post and trackback. I'd rather, do a quick digg, twitt, or the like. I think this is becoming more of the norm throughout the blog-o-sphere. Comments are still high though!

Cheers!

[Matthew Hurst]

Steve,

I agree with your observation regarding trackbacks. However, your graph of the flat use of the word 'blogs' is misleading. You are assuming that the english language blogosphere is growing and that, if this word is flat, then it is on the decline proportionally. However, there have been many posts of late suggesting that the english language blogosphere (that is to say, for this graph, the blogosphere that Technorati knows about) is not growing. Thus the graph should be interpreted as meaning we are just as obsessed as we were before - but we aren't becoming more obsessed.

[BillyWarhol]

Figgers!

I just did my First Link Back 2 daze ago*

Darn always a day Late & a Buck short!!

;))

It was a fairly time consuming process tho*

Even on DIGG - i don't wanna be the Author lemme thumb it & get the hell out!!

[farrell]

I went live with my redesigned blog and site last week and did so without trackbacks, so from my small sample I'd say you're right on here.

It just doesn't seem to matter anymore.

Reducing spam was also a thought, but mostly I just didn't see the need...

[Brian Clark]

Blogging continues and is strong but it's part of something bigger.

Yep.. it's called social media. Whoops, you don't use that term any longer. ;)

[richardfmitchell]

Hi Great Comment you have posted

[Matt S.]

I've been blogging for almost a year, and really haven't found trackbacks useful myself.

[Benchoola]

good one

[Sameer]

Steve, I think MashTracker by Mashable and Megite is a refreshing 2nd generation trackback concept. Now we just need a neater way to place it in a blog ;) But it's a great start.

[Wayan]

I like the idea of TrackBacks. A link with short description beats a widget as it gives actual content reference information. I use them when writing about other's sites on my own.

But I do not have them on my (MT-powered) site for I found that 99% linking back to me were spam, and the sorting of spam for real links was way too much hassle.

Yet another Web 2.0 technology crippled by spammers.

[RT]

I agree with Azeem. Turned mine off a long time ago. Quite useless IMO in fact I had one of my editors ask about them today and I told him no one really used them anymore - or I thought so. Looks like I was right. Peace.

[John Dodds]

Why would a blogpost mention the word blogs? Why would that be an indicator of the popularity of blogging? Blogging is about myriad subjects, it's not about blogs. The chart is pretty meaningless.

[John Dodds]

P.S. The equivalent charts for blogging and blogosphere show an upward trend.

[Adam Brucker]

I think that it all depends on why you are blogging in the first place.

In my situation, the traffic that I get from Digg, Reddit, etc... is typically one or two clicks and out. I suppose you could argue that I could do a better job of "converting" or capitalizing on those clicks in some meaningful way but these people aren't really my target audience anyway (and I'm not an ad supported blog) so it's a lower priority for me.

Now, contrast that with the traffic that I get from leaving trackbacks and comments - those are the people who spend 10 minutes on my site visiting 5 or 6 different pages and really get a feel for what my blog is all about.

Take this comment for instance. There might be 10 or 20 people who say, "BadSlacks.com," that sounds weird / interesting / intriguing, and this Adam guy seems to know what he's talking about, so what the heck, I'll click the link and check it out.

Out of those 20 people maybe 1 or 2 really connect with the blog and subscribe. (As opposed to 1 person out of 500 from Digg subscribing)

Over the course of a year, maybe I sell a few more books, maybe my ideas spread a little wider, maybe I land a few more speaking engagements or consulting gigs.

For me, that equals success. It also allows me to write and blog about things that matter to me and contribute to my bigger vision.

I'm quickly learning that the fact that my content is unlikely to be the Twitter du jour is not necessarily a bad thing...

But again, back to my original point, what works for me (trackbacks, comments, etc...) clearly isn't the right approach for everyone.

[paul]

Three years ago when most bloggers were software developers there were a greater number of trackbacks per post then there are today when everybody and there Uncle has a blog.

[James]

I don't think it was ever really obvious how to use TrackBacks. I'd consider myself an above-average blogger but I never understood how to use them (please don't flame me!). I always just linked to the link at the top of the page.

[Owen]

Sure Trackback interest is waning as a result of its spam implications. It is very easy for malcontents to send a few hundred ads for "enhancement" to your blog via trackback if you don't have some kind of filter.

From a technological point of view, Pingback is superior. It doesn't require extra effort to use, since your blog software can detect when you're making outgoing links, and it's less prone to spam because a pingback can be verified.

Really, those "chicklets" that I see everywhere are quite ugly. They don't ever integrate well with the site design, and do they really offer anything additional to your readers than "I'm an attention whore"?

Visitors to your site might enjoy voting for your post because they think it's useful, but what is ultimately more useful: Yet another Digg or someone writing a response to your post that you can learn about via the trackback/pingback response mechanism?

[Jean-Patrick Smith]

I like trackbacks, it's a good concept. If easy to apply spam filtering system were updated, plus the next generation tools previously commented, I think it will survive.

It is as a practical (and technologically cool) way to cite an author's ideas.

I will use trackbacks if needed as my blog isn't live yet. And I like how you noted how blogs aren't "it" anymore, there are social networks and everything is integrating into an all together different experience.