February 8, 2010 | Blogging

When you publish a post, WordPress tells a number of blog indexing services about it.

But it also does that every time you update the post, which for me is often five times in 10 minutes after publishing.

If you ping them too many times, they can ban you for spammy behavior.

So, how do you avoid getting banned?

What is a ping?

The word ping was originally used as the name of the Unix utility ping, which tries to contact another computer on the network to see if it’s visible to your computer.

In the blogging world, ping is used to mean your blog contacting a blog indexing service to tell it when you’ve published a post.

WordPress blog pings

By default, WordPress pings rpc.pingomatic.com when you publish a post.

The settings for this are in Settings > Writing > Update Services.

However, and this is key, it also pings when you update the post.

While this is OK if you’ve come back to the post a month or even a week later and added some material that you want indexed, it’s not so good if you’re just changing some minor errors.

What I normally do is proofread a post before publishing it. But no matter how much you proofread, there’s always something you miss. Sometimes I’ve updated a post up to five times after publishing for minor stuff like:

• Adding a picture
• Changing the alignment of a picture
• Bolding a word
• Adding a link
• Adding a tag

All of this in the space of 10 minutes or so. In that time, the web indexing spider for the blog index may or may not have even come around to visit your site, and you’ve already sent them multiple pings.

Overpinging

It’s like ringing someone’s doorbell over and over again when they’ve already heard you and haven’t reached the door yet. You’re likely to annoy them, and they might just not open the door whereas they would have if you didn’t keep ringing.

As for the blog indexes, they don’t really like over-pinging. Think about it if you were the blog service. You already receive millions of pings per day for legitimate posts. Would you really want to receive twice or 3X or 4X that number for no reason?

That’s why it’s believed that some of these services actually ban you if you ping too often.

cbnet Ping Optimizer WordPress Plugin

Since bare WordPress pings too often, you have to use a plugin to make it work like you want. The best overall plugin I’ve found for that is the cbnet Ping Optimizer.

It’s a fork of the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, with the difference being that you don’t have to sign up for their e-mail newsletter to get the plugin.

After installing the plugin, go to the settings in Settings > cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Note: Don’t click on the “settings” link in the Installed Plugin list. That doesn’t work in version 2.3.2 of the plugin.

I checked the “Limit excessive pinging in short time” option and set the time to 15 minutes and click Save Settings:

You can set the blog index services to be pinged either in cbnet Ping’s settings or in WordPress’s own settings at Settings > Writing. On the backend, it’s the same setting shared between the two of them.

Ping log

Another advantage of cbnet Ping Optimizer besides avoiding excessive pinging is the ping log. It tells you when WordPress pinged a blog index, and when it didn’t (i.e., you updated a post in quick succession, but the blog index wasn’t sent a ping due to the settings):

Other WordPress Ping Plugins

There are some other ping plugins for WordPress, but they’re not as fit for the purpose or accessible as cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Smart Update Pinger v2.00

This plugin by Christian Davn is discontinued according to various blog posts.

I can’t find an original source for it, and it’s basically abandoned at this point.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

This is a ping plugin that works with the latest WordPress’s, but you have to register your e-mail to get the plugin. The plugin itself is free and open source under GNU GPL.

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger

This is also a ping plugin that works with the latest WordPress versions, but you have to register your e-mail to get the plugin.

There’s a Ping Watcher and Ping List Checker plugin too, but they don’t do what the other ping plugins do.

Resources

cbnet Ping Optimizer

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4 Responses to “Updating Your WordPress Blog Too Frequently: Avoiding Getting Banned from Ping Services”

1. Jay Booshay says:

   February 9, 2010 at 5:39 pm

   This is really great. I am going to download this plugin right now. I never knew that this could happen. How’d you find out?
   Jay Booshay´s last blog ..David Paterson and His Prostitute Predicament
2. typo3 templates says:

   February 9, 2010 at 10:51 pm

   its really nice plug in.. I will download it . it is really beneficial for us. thanks for sharing.
3. omercan says:

   May 31, 2010 at 8:09 am

   Thanks for the post.

   What if our blog has already been flagged with “ping spam” without knowing what this ping spam is? Honestly, I had no idea about this up until today when I figured my latest post didn’t show up in the last 4 days. I did updates so I guess it just went out of the loop.

   I already installed the plugin you recommended. It seems like working just fine. What do we do in my situation? Is there a way to remove our blog from ping spam pool?

   Thank you in advance.
4. Tom says:

   July 7, 2010 at 6:08 am

   I already used it and satisfied with the result.
   Tom´s last blog ..Is Now The Right Time To Refinance