Instructions for enabling Blogger Trackbacks

Blogger Backlinks, just like Trackbacks, enable you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your posts. Here's a short tutorial on how to enable trackbacks in Blogger. There is also some little HTML code that you can add to your blogger templates. The code is very similar to the Blogger comments template code.

Backlinks feature is based on the link: operator of Google Blog Search. So sites linking to your blog will need to be indexed by Blog Search and there may be a slight delay before the backlinks appear on your blog.

1. The backlinks setting can be found under the Settings Comments tab, and consists of a single, simple option to turn it on or off:


2. If you are using a standard Blogger template, the Trackback code automatically gets appended in the template as soon as you enable the above setting. But if you are using a custom Blogger template, the above setting will not be available for you. You are then required to add the HTML code manually to the template at the right place.

3. Look for the area enclosed in the <ItemPage> tag in your template. You will notice a comment block section (look for Links to this post: </h4>
<dl id="comments-block">
<BlogItemBacklinks>
<dt class="comment-data">
<a href="<$BlogBacklinkURL$>" rel="nofollow"><$BlogBacklinkTitle$></a></dt>
<$BlogBacklinkDeleteIcon$><br/><$BlogBacklinkSnippet$><br />
<dd class="comment-body">
<br/><em>posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @ <$BlogBacklinkDateTime$></em>
</dd>
</BlogItemBacklinks>
</dl>
<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$></p>
</BlogItemBacklinksEnabled></div>

You will have to change the CSS styles and classes based on your Blog CSS Template. Just like comments, Blog owners can even delete or hide backlinks that they do not wish to display.

If you want to turn off backlinks for individual posts, you can do so. The process is the same as that for turning off comments. Just edit the post in question and change the options that appear below the posting form. (see the image on the right).

This is not anything new for experienced bloggers. People have long used Technorati Cosmos to know who are linking to their posts. But since it comes from Google, it definitely deserves attention.

Update: Blogger introduces additional options for Backlinks. If you click that link you'll be taken to the post page, where the backlinks are all listed beneath the comments. Clicking the triangles next to each link will display a snippet of text from the page linking to you, as well as some author and date information.

Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/10/instructions-for-enabling-blogger.html

web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org