What does it mean to be pinged

Here are a few definitions of ping, pinged, pinging as they relate to the world of computers and blogging:

First, a general definition:

A protocol that sends a message to another computer and waits for acknowledgment, often used to check if another computer on a network is reachable.

ping. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ping (accessed: September 06, 2006).

Ping is also a reference to a computer program which accomplishes the above:

A program written in 1983 by Mike Muuss (who also wrote TTCP) used to test reachability of destinations by sending them one, or repeated, ICMP echo requests and waiting for replies. Since ping works at the IP level its server-side is often implemented entirely within the operating system kernel and is thus the lowest level test of whether a remote host is alive. Ping will often respond even when higher level, TCP-based services cannot. The term is also used as a verb: “Ping host X to see if it is up.”

ping. Dictionary.com. The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, Denis Howe. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ping (accessed: September 06, 2006).

In the blogging world, a ping is a message sent from the blogging application to other services to let them know the blog has been updated. For example, my blog can be set up to “ping” Technorati every time I post a new entry. The blogging application, in my case, WordPress, sends a message to Technorati letting them know that I’ve posted something new. Technorati updates their own records about my blog and lists the post.

Typically a service is used to accomplish pinging. One common service is called Ping-O-Matic. They define their service as the following:

a service to update different search engines that your blog has updated

A trackback is sort of like a ping but it involves blog to blog communication rather than blog to search engine communication. So if someone says they have been pinged, in most cases, they really mean they have been trackbacked. All that means is that some other blog has referenced your blog on their site. However, this reference is more than just a link. A true trackback will show up in the comments of the post that was trackbacked.

For more information visit this article about blogging which includes sections on
pinging and trackbacks.