How to Stop Trackback Spam on WordPress

by Daniel Scocco

questions and answers

Odtaa asks:

I’m getting some weird trackbacks on my websites. They link to one of my articles and then lots of other links.

The sites are usually Wordpress. They have links to many articles, including mine, but nothing else.

I assume some way of boosting one of the links on the site in a way of fooling Google.

Should I delete them?

Yes you should delete those, as they are probably trackback spam.

One of the problems with most blogging platforms is that people can easily abuse the trackback feature. On WordPress, for instance, you have a box right below the text editor titled “Send Trackbacks.” If users put the URL of your post there and publish or update their posts, your blog will get a trackback notification and probably put a link on your comments section to that blog.

If the user puts hundreds of post URLs on that field, therefore, he would be generating hundreds of backlinks to his website. Most would be nofollowed, some perhaps not, but still he would gain traffic and some visibility with search engines.

Sometimes the automatic trackback feature will not work, and then the user will need to actually include the links on the post body. That is the kind you are seeing, probably. After a while the can delete those posts, and the trackbacks remain where they are.

Deleting those spam trackbacks manually is an option, but it might start taking a lot of time. If you want to solve the problem for good, there are two options.

One is to keep the trackbacks but use a filtering system. My recommendation for this would be the Simple Trackback Validation plugin.

A second alternative, which is more drastic, is to completely remove trackbacks froom your single post pages. I explain how to do that on the post Separate Trackbacks from Comments on Your WordPress Blog.

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21 Responses to “How to Stop Trackback Spam on WordPress”

  1. Sergej Müller on May 1st, 2009 8:08 pm

    Antispam Bee, a antispam plugin for wordpress stop the trackback spam automatically. Check it out: http://antispambee.com

    Thanks.

  2. Daniel Scocco on May 1st, 2009 9:35 pm

    @Sergej, I will check that one out.

  3. find love on May 2nd, 2009 1:56 am

    Nice and well-written article.. I got an idea about trackback in your article..
    thanks

  4. R Kumar on May 2nd, 2009 7:14 am

    I have only been using Akismet in Wordpress and it capture everything that has multiple links in the body as “SPAM” and retains it till I do not approve it. So when I see that the attempt by the person posting the comment is to spam my blog, I straightaway delete it with the one-click button in Akismet dashboard.

  5. Harsh Agrawal on May 2nd, 2009 11:29 am

    These days even I’m getting lots of trackback. Main reason is because of Autoblogs. Whenever I write any article with keyword SEO or adsense. I instantly get 3-4 trackbacks from autoblog. Sometime it become hard to distinguish between original blog and autoblog.
    I simply check the PR of other blog and then accept the trackback if it is justified.

  6. kalem kamera on May 2nd, 2009 2:17 pm

    Nice and well-written article.. I got an idea about trackback in your article..
    thanks

  7. Boerne Search on May 2nd, 2009 2:52 pm

    This looks like something I will need to read more on. I guess I just don’t get PR value anymore.

  8. Nikhil on May 2nd, 2009 3:08 pm

    I regularly delete the spams.
    In the beginning I was unknown about the spam things but after sometime I got that they are nothing but putting my post link in the post so I deleted all of them…

  9. Shalini on May 2nd, 2009 8:13 pm

    I don’t want to sound dumb, but where do you find these trackbacks?

  10. Daniel Scocco on May 2nd, 2009 8:26 pm

    @Shalini, they are mixed with the comments.

  11. adis on May 3rd, 2009 1:55 am

    I still confuse how to separate the real trackback or spam track back….

  12. Melvin on May 3rd, 2009 3:47 am

    surprisingly large blogs like shoemoney seems to be reluctant on accepting spam trackbacks.. well i used to before but i’ve realized they’re nothing but spams/or my own content

  13. Muzi Mohale on May 3rd, 2009 5:06 am

    Also agree with ‘R Kumar’ I use Akismet which work wonders…

  14. Bengt on May 3rd, 2009 8:35 am

    I use WP-SpamFree and The TrackBack Validator to stop spam.
    http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/plugins/wp-spamfree
    http://seclab.cs.rice.edu/proj.....or-plugin/

    These plugins serve me well, I use them in addition to Akismet. WP-SpamFree blocks what Akismet misses.

  15. odtaa on May 3rd, 2009 4:35 pm

    Thanks Daniel,

    I have been deleting these trackbacks manually so I’m really pleased of your and other people’s suggestions on the appropriate plugin.

    @R Kumar You’re right Askimet is essential to kill spam, but these trackbacks are a different matter to comment spam.

    The people doing it seem quite organised. The first trackback was a record download site, (probably dodgy), but seemed no risk.

    However over the next few weeks the backlinks are used to selling drugs and hard core porn.

    Fortunately it seems to have stopped.

    Paul Odtaa

  16. Sapikk on May 4th, 2009 3:20 pm

    Thanks a lot man.. Meanwhile, I still don’t get this problem on my blog but really appreciate with this information.
    :)

    p/s: Hope, i can get more blogging tips here as look as your blog domain name “DailyBlogTips”..

    :)

  17. diabetesnotes on May 6th, 2009 6:29 am

    thank you for sharing the tips, still try to use the right plugin for that

  18. Ajith on May 7th, 2009 6:25 am

    This was the topic of interest in my blog this week as well… Blog scraping has become a nightmare because these people actually not only link to your site but actually paste your content there using automated feedscraping tools.

    I have listed some ways to deal with it including the usage of antileach plugins, writing to the authors, htaccess bans etc.

  19. Jenny Kumar on May 9th, 2009 5:51 am

    I really liked your post.

  20. Peter Fry on October 5th, 2009 12:49 pm

    Very helpful, this has been annoying me for some time. Thank you

  21. Johnson on November 1st, 2009 10:30 pm

    Thanks, I now know what to do with the trackbacks on my blog. Askimet for wordpress also work very well, but you have to sign up for an account.

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