If you are an owner of a WordPress blog, then most probably you might be facing some WordPress trackback related spam in your blog and if your blog has some good amount of blog posts then this problem escalates and it's quite difficult to control the problem.
Although this problem maybe solved by using some wordpress plugin, but using wordpress plugin for every small problem simply bloats your wordpress and your blog becomes quite slow. So, use as few plugins as you can.
Recommended Reading:
Born to Blog: Building Your Blog for Personal and Business Success One Post at a Time
In our blog Comptalks which has more than 1300+ posts, the spammers targeted the older blog posts and were sending some weird trackbacks to our blog posts.
Tips to prevent your WordPress blog from trackback spammers:
- Login to your WordPress blog.
- Go to Settings-> Discussion and then uncheck the box which says :”Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) ” . This won't allow trackbacks in the new posts,but all of your older posts still have the problem and people can spam your blog there.
- To disable trackback in older posts you can go to each and every post of yours and disable them ,but if you have quite a big blog like then there is a high chance that you are going to have some problems editing each and every posts. Here's a simple solution on how it can be done in just one click.
- Log in to your cpanel and go to phpMyadmin . Open the database of your blog and then run this query on the SQL tab :
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status="closed";
Here, I have assumed that you are using the prefix wp_ for your wordpress database and if you are using any other prefix like ct_ ,then you should replace wp_ with ct_ .
The above query will help you in disabling trackbacks completely and from now on you don't have to worry about trackback spam. So, chill and enjoy blogging.
For WordPress plugin lovers
There is a plugin to stop trackback spam and you can download it from here. But I would not recommend to use a plugin to stop a simple problem.
I hate trackback Spam… I’ve stopped allowing trackbacks on all new posts. Trackbacks mean nothing to me at all so they are gone!
Great article!
Ryan H>
Ryan, Disabling trackbacks within WordPress settings usually work on newer posts, I actually did the same thing, no trackbacks are allowed on my blog anymore, so no worries!
However trackbacks are enabled on older posts, so the trick in this post solve it, nice idea!
I think trackback is still useful in some cases. I still enable the feature because I want to appreciate and thank all other bloggers that link back to my blog posts.
Is that what the purpose of a Trackback is? To thank people?
Thanks for sharing your tips. Spam trackbacks are a real pain. I started turning them off earlier this year. I will have to remember to go in and close pings on all the old posts as well.
Sure, you should do it as in some blogs spammers are sending in 200-300 spams daily.
What a post man. Thanks i have done all changes in my SQL. I really need to remove this crap from my blogs.
Good to hear that this post helped you 🙂
Akismet is a free plugin that will help you monitor and block you spam messages automatically. It free and its really good, i use it on every blog i build.
Akismet is no doubt very good plugin but its too much resource hogging plugin and I would recommend you to use GASP and then use this code to make your blog faster.
I don’t use any other plugin except Akismet to prevent trackback spam and amazingly, I hardly see an invalid trackback could getting through the system.
This seems to be not a big problem for my blog. I heard that using CDN service also could help stop spamming, do you think so?
Have you tried Growmap plugin. Try that it’s awesome and light.
Trackbacks can certainly be a nuisance due to all the SPAMvertisers on the web who are looking for a free ride anywhere they can get one.
I tend to accept trackbacks on a case-by-case basis, mostly with/for strategic alliances in the community.
I also agree with Bishwajeet that if you’re not looking for a blanket solution to suppress trackbacks all together, GASP is a fantastic plugin. – It is actually built into the CommentLuv Premium plugin by Andy Bailey, so it’s nice and lightweight and it will separate your trackbacks from your other comments and allow you to moderate these on a case-by-case. I have found it to be a useful tool!
Great article!
Cat Alexandra
Alexandra Marketing Group
For me the disabling the trackback from setting did not work,,,and i was not confident enough to mess around with phpMyadmin so i used a plugin to remove it,,it is call “disable Trackback”
Adding a plugin makes your blog heavy,so its better to use as few as you can. Also, this is a simple SQL query ,which won’t effect either of your posts or comments, it will just turn off your trackback section.
Thanks for this,,,i am really having trouble with trackbacks,,,had 300 trackbacks in a day
Even I used to get that amount of trackbacks sometimes, but disabled it completely to resolve the issue.
Hi, this is really an useful tip to prevent our blog from tracback spammers, I used to avoid this by using plugin, as you said my blog is loading very slowly I think I have to remove some plugins…
Yes, you need to minimize the number of plugins in your website. Also, delete spam comments and empty the drafts folder and enpty trash too, It will help you in increasing page loading time.
Perfect timing, was on my to do list this week to learn how to stop these. Thanks for this informative piece.
Glad to help you 🙂
Bishwajeet
thank you for the tips brother spam is an ongoing problem and this will help a lot
Your post shows just how easy it is for people to stop spam trackbacks it beggers belief that more people don’t know about it.
This is absolutely fabulous information. I have been getting more spam lately, and I didn’t know what to do. Thank for this.
Thanks for this valuable tips, I was facing same problem of trackback spam like others and I was deleting everyday those spam trackbacks. I’ll try your methods to see if works.
Very happy to help you 🙂
I was so tired of cleaning my website from spam. I am very grateful for these tips. Spam is a crucial trouble we face today. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing this article. I have received a spare amount of trackback spam and have disabled them. I look forward to trying these techniques and re-enabling the trackbacks.
Is anyone seeing value in trackbacks? I know some people leave them on, but others disable them completely. Thoughts on this?
I had trackbacks on for quite long time, but don’t see any value with it. Just removed the trackback stuff from the theme files itself, so it won’t show up in the posts.
You are a god send. Who would have thought something so simple could fix such a major problem. I get spam ping backs DAILY! Thanks so much for this.
hehe !!!!!!!!! If you are a believer of GOD, then everyone is godsend 🙂
Turning it off will sure fix it! However, I like to see who’s linking to me so I use a plugin called Simple Trackback Validation to catch fake trackbacks. Works great.
This article is in good timing Bishwajeet, I get a lot of spam comments on my website, even-though I don’t use comment-luv or do follow comments.
thnx for sharing thi. trackback spams are really a great headace.
Great post Bishwajeet.
WordPress trackback spam is really annoying, and to uncheck the ”Allow pingbacks and trackbacks ” manually for each and every post can be an exhausting idea.
Your tip saves the day 🙂
Hi. Thanks for sharing this article. This is really useful for trackback spams. I don’t like it all. Great share!
Hi Bhaswajeet, Great post but please confirm if this query will not banned the geniune comment postings?
Spamming is a common problem and everyone is getting 100s of spam daily and I previously install a plug-in and I put couple of test comments and it blocked my comments as well .. please advice?
This won’t stop comments from being posted. This will just stop trackbacks.
I really love to stop by here.. You never fail to teach me more.. Thanks for this another great tips.. Keep up the great work!
Along with spam trackbacks some valuable trackbacks are also tracked, which helps you determine whether you are on the right track or not, what kind of people have subscribed your feeds. Having trackbacks active is not at all bad. It’s up to you how you take it…
Hi Bishwajeet,
It was a really useful article. I had one query though, it would be great if anybody could answer my question. If I disable the trackbacks then won’t the valuable links also get blocked?
Hey, sorry for late reply. But disabling trackback won’t hamper your links, coz trackbacks give links to others.
Because I’m a plugin lover, I had a closer look at the plugin. 😉
I love the fact that it checks the ip and url and not only the ip, where other plugins only check the ip
But I also have a small tip, don’t publish an article on articlebase on anything seo related.!!
95% of my trackback spam is comming from the one article I published on that site. 🙁
Never tried article marketing, so never faced that problem in my life.
Hey…
This is an useful tip to prevent our blog from tracback spammers..
Your suggestion help me a lot …
Thanks
Thanks for this tips. This is a precious information. It quite annoying to see more and more spam when your blog is growing up. This will solve the problem for good.
Hi,
Thanks to the article, this is like a spam that every WordPress blogger facing. What I do when trackback spam added in to my comment is, manually delete all track backs. This is quiet time consuming process, so will give it a try to use any of these one.
Now for me trackback is only problem . Got rid of comment spam . Will do what you said . Thanks for sharing the article .
I am using Akismet and i don’t think i should use any other tools 😉 Bcz its automatically check all trackback for spam :).
BTW thanks Bishwajeet for you nice tips.
Thanks.
Agree Amit Akismet do well against blocking of Spammed comments but I didn’t think it work for trackback.
Man, Askimet is a pain. It spams good comments as well. I don’t like that at all.
Akismet is Pain??? Never Buddy. Its super Fine Plugin for Spam and all. I think almost every WordPress using Akismet(If i am not Wrong 🙂 ).
Start using it buddy. . Your pain will remove soon 😀
Akismet is too much resource hogger so it’s better to remove it. Even I used it but removed it as it was giving too much problems for us.
Let see. But I am not ready to remove it 🙂 If i will get any problem then i’ll remove it for sure. But still its working fine for me.
Hi Bishwajeet, congrats with your first post:) As it was said in one of the above comments, trackbacks may sometimes be useful. I also think so.
It might be useful many times, but it’s way too much harmful considering the fact that there are many autoblogs, who try to kill your website.
This is an very helpful tips for prevent our blogs from spamming trackback..Nice post..Thank you so much.
Thanks this will help a lot. Those trackback spam messages are very annoying.
I hate trackback spams on my blog. It is a headache for me. Now I think I have a solution. Thanks for sharing.
Great that it helped you 🙂
Thanks to you I completely Solved the track back problem. I am very happy, no longer they fill my comment box. Thanks a lot or the tips.
Thanks for this, I was getting 200+ a day TB Spam.
JUST IN CASE, in the future I want to, how would I allow trackbacks again?
I haven’t had any trackback spam to my site yet. I am wondering why.
I am getting that never ending Spam comments.
GASP is a great plugin even we use it for our website, but it fails to check the trackback spams.
This is what I really want, thanks for sharing. Now I can block spam – trackbacks.
Absolutely. every point mentioned in the reasons to stop trackbacks are true. We are also having many plugins that create auto track-backs. But we need to consider that Trackbacks are created by having good motto in mind, but its not got polluted.
Thanks a lot for awesome articles.
Too much of spamming is existing now a days, and we need to make sure that we get updated with these sort of stuff to secure our blogs from spammers and thanks for writer for providing useful content.
Thank you for this SQL sentence. Appreciate it.
Because of your sharing I’ve identified the WP table that was carrying all the old Trackback SPAM.
I’ve deleted this junk and I’ve gone into Comments and unchecked the check box that permitted Trackbacks.
Much Obliges.
Regards
Ivan Bayross
Hi my family member! I want to say that this post is amazing, nice written and come with approximately all significant infos. I’d like to look more posts like this .
before running “closing trackbacks query” you should before remove them:
DELETE FROM `wp_comments` WHERE `comment_type`=”trackback”
Thanks, darlin’. I’ve been getting a lot of trackback spam on old posts. Been pulling my hair out trying to figure out where I went wrong. I’m also trying to eliminate the use of plugins. It’s so nice to see another blogger of color doing big things in the blogosphere :-)!
Ever since I did this, I have to manually enable commenting on each and every one of my new posts. So I ended up posting a few posts and have missed the opportunity for comments since I didn’t realize this was happening. Is there a fix?
Hi Bishwajeet,
Nice information bro. These days i am getting huge amount of unusual trackbacks on my blog and everyday these trackback gets increases. At present it is 800 trackbacks and i am unable to delete those trackbacks manually.
I used GASP and other technique to control it, but i am still unable to control it. I’ll try your methods to control trackbacks.
Thank you for sharing knowledge. 🙂
Thank you Ilean Smith mam for referring me such kind of nice content. 🙂
Using plugin even for a simple task is not a good idea. I love to see it without any plugin.
Best Regards!
Many thanks for this SQL snippet – this was, what I’m searching for.
BR,
Marcel
I have heard that trackbacks encourages spam activity so I disabled trackbacks for my blog. Thanks Bishwajeet for sharing the post with us.
i really had no idea about trackback or pingback. now its clear from this post i’m going to disable in all my blogs . thanks a lot
Hello! Im experimenting REALLY a lot of spam. While the number of visits to my personal page do not increase at all (not more than 2 per day 🙁 ), the spam does it. I think is my location or something. Should I really pay for akismet? 🙁
I hate trackback Spam… I’ve stopped allowing trackbacks on all new posts. Trackbacks mean nothing to me at all so they are gone!
Great article!
Great post Bishwajeet ! Its very helpful to me 🙂
Thanks, was getting a bunch of trackback spam!
great post! Thanks for your code, now no trackback spam in my post