RWT Webmaster Tools Blog

Pingoat Review

Pingoat is a service that pings/notifies other blog services sites. Do we need another one of these?

The two major advantages that Pingoat “may” hold over others are the number of services it pings (just around 50) and the international scope of those services.

Since I am a WordPress user, I use Ping-o-matic to provide my pinging services. I have reviewed Ping-o-matic elsewhere. For the sake of this review, I will be comparing Pingoat to Ping-o-matic.

Currently Pingoat pings 54 services, while Ping-o-matic pings 20. The higher number does not necessarily mean it is better. All twenty services that Ping-o-matic pings are pinged by Pingoat. That is good for Pingoat. Since, my WordPress is set up to ping Ping-o-matic automatically with every post, I used the Pingoat web interface to ping the 34 other services that are not pinged by Ping-o-matic (I didn’t want to double ping). All but two pinged successfully. Two (2) failing out of thirt-four (34) is not bad. There could be any number of reasons they failed. In about an hour, I had posted again on my blog and used Pingoat again to ping those 34 other services. “Oopsie! You cant ping so often. Give pingoat some rest!” was the error I received. For those who post often, this is a problem. Even if only two posts are made a day but they are made close together, the second one would not be able to ping the services.

The 34 other services pinged by Pingoat are more international in flavor. There are several Spanish, Japanese, and German sites. These sites exist in their native languages. Will pinging a post on my English based site be of value on a site that not only is written entirely in Japanese but probably used by users whose primary language is that as well? My gut tells me that it would not be of much value.

Take Feeds4all as a counter example. It is a Dutch site that is written in English. International, but still relevant for my English based website. I can use Feeds4all to reach English speaking Dutch.

It may work to the Pingoats advantage if the services were divided according to language. In the end, that may serve Pingoat’s users better. Plus, adding English-based International websites like Feeds4all would be a great way to add additional value.

While I think in the end Pingoat doesn’t offer much more than Ping-o-matic for the average English based website, I am impressed that the site was developed by an 18 yr old. Check out his other work here.

Before I leave this review, I must address the issue of the name and tagline. Pingoat is short for Ping Goat, and a goat adorns the website as its logo. “Its not the usual mehehe” is the tagline. Since I am not from Southern India, the joke or reference or nuance of both the logo and the tagline is lost on me.