I don’t know if my blog has yet been banned by Wordpress, but MaxBlogPress’s “Ping Optimizer” should help to prevent any future possibility of getting my blog banned! According to MBP, there are some “major flaws” in the Wordpress pinging-system that can get your blog banned AND make it lose valuable traffic. I don’t want to take any chances of getting my precious blog banned by Wordpress, so I did some research…

What happens when a blog pings?

When a blog pings, it sends out updated information from your blog to search engines and across the rest of the web. Each time you update your blog, you should use a pinging service to let the web know that your blog is updated! By using the pinging service, you send a “ping” to them and they send your blog’s information across the web. Basically, your blog “ping” contains your name and URL and is usually in XML format. The pinging services (i.e. Ping-O-Matic) have servers that are able to accept “pings” and process the XML formats.

According to MBP, “A blogs ability to ping is very powerful,” and “when a blog pings, many background processes happen which get your blog quickly indexed by search engines as well as bringing traffic from many other sources.” If your pings are not done properly via Wordpress, it could endanger the growth of your blog!

If you are using Wordpress, then it’s very possible that by now your blog has been banned from many ping services because of what is referred to as “ping spamming.”

How does the Wordpress pinging system operate?

Each time you publish a blog entry, Wordpress pings. This is fine, that’s exactly what Wordpress is supposed to do! However, each time you edit & update an existing post, WP also pings! If you edit & save a post 15 times, a ping will be sent each for each of those 15 updates! No matter if you make a minute change like adding a period or only changing one letter, the extra ping will be sent.

This is how blogs get banned from pinging services. They are pinging out of control! Excessive pinging is not only detrimental to your blog, it is plain annoying to the ping services, hence: the banning of your blog. When pinging there’s no way to know which post has been edited and updated because the ping always sends the same URL link from the same blog post even upon update! So if you don’t have the MBP “Ping Optimizer” and sometimes edit blog posts, you are doing your blog harm!

A side note: If you have WP 2.1 or lower, even if you schedule future posts, your blog will get banned. Ping services do not like when people schedule the future posting of blog entries. If you have higher than 2.1, you are fine with the scheduling of future posts.

Now, according to MPB, even the programs: Smart Update Pinger, Ping Fix, WP Cron Future Ping are not effective. The solution for all of your pinging problems is MaxBlogPress’s free “Ping Optimizer” plugin. It is currently working great for AndrewPavelski.Com and I have evidence that it is working. In the Wordpress “Options” section, I click on “Ping Optimizer” and can edit the ping services that my blog currently pings to and can see a log of all the pings this program allows to be sent out and all of the pings that it blocks! I copied an example from the log my “Ping Optimizer” automatically created:

01-10-2008 23:27:34 - NOT Pinging (“MaxBlogPress “Deal Dot Com” Widget (Review)” was edited)

+ 01-09-2008 05:16:22 - Pinging (new post: “Pay Per Play Ads (Preview)”)

AND……

01-07-2008 22:59:38 - NOT Pinging (“$10 Million Gameplan: Slaving w/ Plug-Ins” was edited)

+ 01-07-2008 22:54:27 - Pinging (new post: “$10 Million Gameplan: Slaving w/ Plug-Ins”)

What is the best solution to this somewhat vexing problem?

The best solution to fixing the pinging WP dilemma is to download and install the free MaxBlogPress “Ping Optimizer!” The MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin corrects and solves all pinging problems for the latest version of Wordpress.” When you install this plugin, it is very easy to use. Once you “activate” it, go to the “Options” section, then “MBPPing Optimizer” and edit all of the services you want to ping, enable pinging, click save, and you are ready to go. You will not need to frequently do anything to update the plugin or need to fuss around with each post. This plugin solves all of my pinging needs.

A Quick Recap:

• When you “publish” a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services on the Ping Optimizer list. This allows search engines and blogging services to index your new post.

• When you edit and update an existing post, it won’t allow unnecessary pings to be sent out to ping services. This saves your blog from getting banned.

Download the MBPPing Optimizer plugin if you haven’t!

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