Definition of trackbacks

Bloggers love it when somebody links to them from within his or her own blog post.  Similarly the bloggers who links to another blogger’s post would like to derive some benefit for the link.  Catering to this mutual linking interest major blogging software like WordPress and MovableTtype allow you to send a TrackBack whenever you link to another blogger’s blog post. This is a way of notifying the other blog that one of its posts have been linked to.  If the other blogger has enabled the feature of displaying all the incoming TrackBacks then a link, linking to your blog post from where you have linked to this particular blog post appears along with that blog post.  Sounds confusing?  This diagram explains it better.

If you are using WordPress to publish a blog posts and if you link to a blog post from a blog that is also published using WordPress then you don’t have to manually enter the TrackBack URL of the post you are linking to because then the TrackBack message is sent automatically.  But if you are linking to a MovableType blog post from your WordPress blog post then you have to manually enter the TrackBack link before publishing your blog post.