TrackBack is a system implemented by many blogging tools that
allows a blogger to see those who have read the original post and have written
another entry concerning it. The purpose of sending a TrackBack is to let a
blogger know that you are referencing him/her on your own blog. The system
works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

TrackBack usually appears below a blog entry and shows an excerpt (partial content) of what has
been written on the target blog, together with a URL and the name of the blog.

Visitors to your blog can ‘ping’ your trackback link to inform you that they
have written an entry in their weblog about your post. You can
also ping your own TrackBack URL if you find an article, weblog post, or a site
that relates to your post. Thus, TrackBack allows you to maintain a list of
"related links" with minimal effort.

The specification for TrackBack and its implementation were developed by Six
Apart, the company that brought us MovableType and content management system.

In order to send a TrackBack ping, you need to get the TrackBack URL
of the blog entry you wish to send a TrackBack ping to. Take note that the
TrackBack URL is different than the regular permanent link (permalink) URL.

Copy that TrackBack URL on the blog entry you wish to reference. When you
are done writing your own blog entry, you must use that URL in the space provided for TrackBack.

Most blogging systems that support the TrackBack function will have a
section somewhere in the area where you create blog entries. It is usually
labeled as ‘Trackback URLs to ping’ or ‘Trackback URLs,’ then there will be a
box or space provided for adding TrackBack URLs.

When you publish
your blog entry where you put the TrackBack URL in, it will
automatically send a notification to the weblog that you referenced. You
have now just sent a TrackBack!

To check if your TrackBack worked, go to the weblog where you sent a TrackBack ping to and see if your blog entry is being cross-referenced on its TrackBack listing.

To quote Ben and Mena Trott, married co-founders of Six Apart who came up
with Trackback, "TrackBack itself is a framework for peer-to-peer
communication between weblogs; it can track cross-weblog discussions, it can
provide remote content repositories, it can emulate guest authoring, etc. The
technical side of TrackBack is very simple: when you want to notify a remote
site of your existence, you send a ping to that site."

To sum up, TrackBack is a way of recording who has linked to your posts and
notifying others that you’ve linked to them.

However, sending a TrackBack ping is only half the
story. You must also be able to receive them so be sure to turn on the feature
that allows you to display those who have sent you a ping from their own blogs.

Trackback is often used as a way to comment on a blog entry remotely or to
continue a discussion in another individual’s weblog, making it a highly
efficient and effective tool for information conveyance in the blogosphere.