Trackbacks and pingbacks are a way for an outbound link to a blog entry or article in your Hub to get a link back to your Hub. The destination blog entry or article will "know" you have put a link on your Hub (automatically), and will often offer a link back to your Hub.

What's the difference between trackbacks and pingbacks?

Not much. The functionality is almost the same, although they work a little differently on the backend. Some blogging platforms support trackbacks, others support pingbacks. HubPages supports both standards, and detects if blogs use either one automatically.

Trackbacks/pingbacks help publicize your Hubs--a link to your Hub, which might be interesting to the blogger's readers, helps get people to visit your Hub.

The best part is that HubPages supports this feature to happen automatically. You do not need to contact the blogger and ask for a link back to your Hub.

Not all sites that you post links on your Hub for will support trackbacks or pingbacks. They are most popular among blogs, and particularly, in links to specific blog entries (not a link to the general blog).

For example:

• Scobleizer: main page

Although provides listing of most recent blog entries, there is no trackback/pingback functionality on the main page. This link in your Hub will not result in a link back to your Hub.

However, if you click on any of the blog entries' titles, you go to a page that is that specific blog entry only, like this one:

• Scobleizer: Is Facebook worth as much as YouTube?

You'll see entry #81 here is a trackback to this Hub, which had originally posted a link to the Scobleizer blog entry.

The only thing you have to do is link to specific blog entries that are relevant to your Hub, using the Links Capsule (insert a new Links Capsule by clicking the link in the Add Capsules box to the upper-right). Many of those blog entries will then post a trackback/pingback to your Hub (not all do, and some have a certain limit that they'll post on the blog entry).

For example, if you follow a food blog pretty closely, and you read an entry about a particular restaurant, you can create an entire Hub (start a new Hub now») about the restaurant, and post a link to that food blog entry in your Hub. Then, the blog will post a trackback/pingback on that specific entry. Again, this part of the process happens automatically--all you have to do is post a link to the blog entry.

In short, HubPages automatically puts both Trackback and Pingback code into your Hubs--you don't need to add this code yourself.

However, if you'd like to learn more, here are some interesting articles for learning more about how trackbacks and pingbacks work:

• Wordpress's discussion of trackbacks and pingbacks
• Six Apart's technical specification for trackbacks
• Technical specifications for pingbacks
• Doug Karr's discussion of trackbacks and pingbacks, including diagram