Pinging Services for WordPress Bloggers

I’ve heard about how pinging services can help to promote new content on one’s Web site. Basically a pinging service works by notifying a list of search providers when you post new content to your Web site or blog. My question is:

Do these work and are they needed for a WordPress.com blog?

While researching the issue I’ve read that these pinging services are no longer needed and can in fact lower your blog’s standing with the search engine.

For example, I took a look into Ping-o-Matic. This service appears to be integrated with WordPress so that a number of search providers are automatically notified as soon as you publish a new blog article (based on information I saw on the WordPress.com forums).

So my question is:

Do WordPress bloggers need to use a pinging tool to advertise new articles & would using multiple pinging tools be useful?

One point of concern about the Ping-o-Matic tool is that the supporting blog has not been updated since 2009. This service was first created in 2004 so it has been around for a while. So what exactly is going on? From the WordPress.com support forums it appears that the Ping-o-Matic tool is still active and is the primary behind-the-scenes pinging tool for WordPress users.

In general I think that this is good news. New blog posts are automatically promoted by a trusted WordPress service and bloggers do not have to separately go to a pinging service to get the word out that they have posted fresh content.

The list of search services pinged by the Ping-o-Matic tool seems rather limited though. On their site they list just 17 common services and 5 specialized services that can be notified. With a standard blog submission I believe that only the common services are notified.

I’m happy to have found this information, since after last year’s Google Panda update SEO mistakes can cost the ranking of a Web site dearly. In this case I would be in danger of being considered a ping spammer by the search engines if I were to manually submit my blog to the same tool that WordPress automatically calls too soon after an article is published.

In most cases I’d say it’s enough to stay with the inbuilt Ping-o-Matic pinging service offered by WordPress. In fact it’s probably safer since using other pinging services may overlap and cause engines to penalize your Web site or blog.

However if you are cautious and conservative with their use, it might be a good idea to use one or more extra pinging services in intervals separated by several hours. This will get your great new articles the best possible exposure without risking negative points from the search engines/blog directories.

What are some good pinging services to use when promoting a Web site?

WordPress has a great article about its use of Ping-o-Matic at the WordPress.org Codex site. As alternate pinging services, they suggest the Google Feedburner Pingshot service (integrated with Blogger.com) or Feed Shark, which pings over 60 services for free.

• http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/: This service allows you to select what services you would like to ping including blog-friendly services, RSS feeds, and podcasts. It does not appear to overlap with Ping-o-Matic which is good for WordPress.com bloggers, and WordPress specifically mentions this service as an alternate to Ping-o-Matic on the WordPress.org Codex site .
• http://pingler.com: Pingler communicates with a number of search services and is a great way to get your content indexed. They have an actively updated blog and also offer various SEO tools including a backlink checker, and they do not require you to sign up for an account to use their tool. If you own a WordPress blog make sure to remove Ping-o-Matic from the list of services to be notified.
• http://www.mypagerank.net: This tool also offers pinging services to multiple sites as well as SEO services and PR (Page Rank) checking. The list of services to be pinged includes Ping-o-Matic, so make sure to leave this option out if you have a WordPress blog.
• http://www.pingmyblog.com/: This tool is targeted to blogs and will notify a list of blog directories about new content on your blog. This would work well along with a service like Ping-o-Matic that notifies search engines. The downside is that they do not make the list of directories visible before you use their service.
• http://autopinger.com/: This tool is also targetted towards blogs and should work well together with a service like Ping-o-Matic (although they both overlap by notifying My Yahoo!). You are in full control over what sites are notified, so you can uncheck any that you do not wish to be pinged. Autopinger offers to ping 24 English services and 19 non-English services.
• http://pingoat.net/: This tool pings 50 services and is targeted towards blogs. It seems to not overlap with Ping-o-Matic, which is also a plus!
• http://www.syncr.com/: A blog-friendly pinging tool that also lists the services that it will ping. Ping-o-Matic is one of them, so WordPress bloggers should be conservative when using this service.