How Setting Your Blog To Ping Could Hurt Your Traffic
June 19th, 2007 by CourtI’m a huge fan of the WordPress timestamp feature. I use it almost every single day, which is why my blog almost always publishes at 7:00 a.m., even though I’m usually fast asleep. I use it to make sure that people find fresh content when they come to CourtneyTuttle.com, even if they come early in the morning.
I realized earlier this week that time-stamping my posts was causing a significant problem - WordPress has a bug that messes up the ping when you set your blog to publish something in the future.
Let me explain this is a little more detail. At the time I’m writing this post, it’s 11:15 a.m. on Monday, 6/18/2007. When I finish writing the post, I will set it to publish tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m.
I set it to post tomorrow by editing this box, which appears in the WordPress ‘Write Post’ page. As you can see, I set June 19th for the date. That’s tomorrow for me, and today for you. 
I also set the time for 07:00, which is 7:00 a.m.
The issue that is causing me to lose traffic and links happens exactly when I click the publish button. The post isn’t going to appear until 7:00 a.m. the following morning, but WordPress doesn’t wait until then to send the ping. The ping is sent immediately.
Technorati, Google Blog Search, and the other blog search engines are going to come to the site immediately to search for new content, except they won’t find any because the new post won’t be here until tomorrow. They won’t index the article, which means that I won’t get any traffic at all from Technorati, and I also won’t get any links. My Technorati tags basically won’t work at all.
I tested this issue this week because I haven’t been getting any traffic from Technorati lately. Before I started time-stamping I used to get 10-50 visitors a day from them. I published my ‘Before You Panic From A Bad Statistical Week’ post without the timestamp to see if that was really the problem. Sure enough, I got some visitors from Technorati for the first time in weeks.
The Solution
So far I haven’t found a solution that I’m happy with. I researched the issue and found out that there used to be a plugin to fix it, but it doesn’t work with any version of WordPress that’s higher than 2.1.
Until I can find a better solution, I’m going to remove all of the ping services from my WordPress admin. I will ping manually everyday using Pingomatic. It’s going to be a hassle, but the only alternative is posting without a timestamp, which I don’t want to do. To ping with Pingomatic, you simply go to the site and type in your URL. You will then select which services you want to ping (I select all of them). Click ’send pings’ and you’re all set!
I’ll be working on finding a plugin that solves the solution. Are there any other time-stampers out there that have noticed this problem?
Save to del.icio.us
Digg This!
Post to Facebook
StumbleItRelated Posts:
How To Create Rippin’ HTML Title Tags
If there's one thing you want to get right with your site, it's your HTML title tags. The HTML title...
John Chow In Google’s Penalty Box
If you've done a Google search lately for 'make money online', you know that John Chow is no longer ...
Giving Alexa A Good Beat-Down
Improving your site's Alexa ranking can drastically increase the amount of advertising dollars you c...
John Chow Gets Google Slapped Again
If any of you have been to JohnChow.com today, you may or may not have noticed that his PageRank dro...
Free WordPress E-book
Caroline Middlebrook emailed me this morning to tell me about a free E-book that she put together to...
Not Using Permalinks - Search Engine Suicide
I'm a huge fan of mybloglog.com, I love to see what other bloggers are up to. I'm always able to fin...
June 19th, 2007 at 9:04 am
I was wondering about that since I noticed that the pings go out immediately. Since I don´t yet get much traffic from Technorati, I wasn´t too worried about it, but it will shortly become an issue as my blog is growing pretty fast.
I don´t know anything about Pingomatic, but is it easier than simply saving your posts and publishing them by hand each day. You can still write them all ahead of time, but just save them as drafts. Just a thought.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I considered that as an option, and I think it will work out well for quite a few people.
I want to publish while I’m asleep - I definitely don’t want to wake up to do it.
All you have to do at Pingomatic is type in your URL, check a few boxes and hit a button.
I think between those two options people should just decide which one is easier for them! Meanwhile I’ll keep looking for a more streamlined solution.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I’d just started using the timestamp feature, and hadn’t realized the pings went out right away. Thanks!
June 19th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I didn’t realize it for a really long time! Hopefully there will be a reasonable solution.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Depending on the version of wordpress you use, wp-cron takes care of this nicely.
http://skippy.net/plugin-wp-cron
Please note, though, the guy who wrote the plugin quit working on it - BOO! but it works wonderfully for versions up to 2.06. It does not work on the newest version.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I wish that he would have kept it updated! I have a more recent version so that plugin won’t do it. I saw that one while I was researching, but am hoping that there is one out there that solves the problem.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Hi,
I came across this plugin at http://www.problogtools.com sometime back. I actually downloaded it but I can’t really tell if it does solve the prob.
Perhaps you might want to try it too.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:49 am
That one looks like it would do the trick, except it requires that the blogger runs cron jobs. Since most bloggers don’t run cron jobs at all, it won’t be a solution for most.
I might give this one a shot for myself but will keep looking for an easier solution.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
icic.. do let me know if you manage to find an easier solution! Thanks!
July 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I’ve been doing some research about the whole timestamp thing tonight. I upgraded to WP 2.2.1 and I am not able to use the timestamp at all. It counts down to posting time then counts up from when it was supposed to be posted. No easy fix yet!
June 19th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I occasionally use the timestamp feature on my blog, and I had no idea that there was a bug like this. Have you, or has anyone, submitted a bug to the wordpress crew?
June 19th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Ya they know about it. I came across a discussion on one of the official WordPress blogs about the issue. It didn’t really sound like they were in a hurry to fix the issue.
July 8th, 2007 at 12:03 am
No kidding. I read three pages from people trying to solve the problem and all they came up with was a total hack of Wordpress.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:32 am
I used the timestamp just two times till now but. Yesterday I realized that a post was not listed in technorati while all the other posts were properly listed. Now after reading your post, I guess this might be the reason, cause as far as I remember it was one of the posts I used a timestamp for.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Yep, I’m sure that’s why. You might want to consider ditching the timestamp or using Pingomatic to ping manually!
June 19th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Actually right now I remember some plugin I found one day. Unfortunately, as I thought I won’t need it, I didn’t care about. Now everything looks different. Will ty to figure it out again and I will let you know.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
hmm….but it does not show up on my site, I do use the ping and future feature and ping a lot of sites. . .strange.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
It probably really hasn’t affected you because you aren’t using tags. You can learn how to use them here:
http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/03/23/get-more-traffic-technorati-tags/
I hope this helps!
June 19th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
But isn’t it that at least technorati is using the category anyway as tag? So it should be like tagging itself, no?
June 20th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Yes they do. The problem that most people run into is that their category names don’t line up with what people search for.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
This sounds like a really interesting problem to get my teeth into. What I’m not sure about is that my hosting does not support the cron command http://www.streamline.net but my timestamp option does work. I’m guessing you should be able to dissable the line of code which tells wp to ping when the publish button is pressed and theoretically reinsert the line of code into the script which looks after the timestamp. Easy in theory but I’m guessing its a bloody hard fix if it hasn’t been sorted. I’m going to have a pley tomoro.
comment posted wireless with my new vario ii!
Andy
June 19th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I don’t even want to think about making a fix myself. I always end up taking longer than I planned on.
If you fix the problem I’ll have to donate a few bucks to buy your lotus.
Oh, and I would definitely publish the solution of course.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I use Pingoat for my manual pinging. You only have to type the url info once then you can bookmark the ping page. Much nicer than typing it every time.
Plus I dragged the bookmark onto my Firefox toolbar and I can do a 1-click ping.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Anthony I just tried that solution and it’s much easier than Pingomatic.
I went to Pingoat, added my URL, and bookmarked it. I like one-lick manual pinging.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Interesting, I had never really thought about this before and I use the timestamp feature all the time…. I’ll have to give this a try! Thanks again Court!
June 19th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I wish I would have figured it out 2 months ago!
You’re welcome and I’ll keep working on a fix.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Yes, I’ve noticed the ping issue, too. I’ve also gone through the same plugin search looking for a fix, but in the end I just opted to use the timestamp function less.
Not really a solution, but I’ve rationalized myself into thinking that posting at night on the west coast of the US is almost as good.
I could fix the WP bug if it were worth the effort — just haven’t taken the time to work on it. How much do you think it would be worth (in terms of community building and goodwill, not dollars)?
June 19th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I think posting at night is a lot better solution than sending a ping that doesn’t work.
I think that creating a fix would be worth quite a bit. I would definitely publish a plugin that took care of the issue. The only thing I would worry about is WordPress creating their own fix and cutting your legs out from under you. It doesn’t seem like they’re in a hurry to fix it though.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
At pingomatic do they tell you when you can ping it? For instance can I do it at night and have it pinged in the morning of the following day?
June 19th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
You can actually ping whenever, you just have to do it manually. You can timestamp to publish at 7:00 a.m. and then ping at 8:00 or 9:00 or whenever.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I had that problem also. It’s why I stopped using the Timestamp feature. On some of my other blogs, I’ll use it.
Usually when I start writing, I have several articles in me. I’ve just started using the “save” feature and then going back and manually publishing them when I’m ready. That way my tags are sent to Technorati and the article is up when Mr. G bot comes for a visit.
Don
June 20th, 2007 at 2:34 am
i’ve been doing this also. once i heard that the pings went out right away, i’ve decided to just save the post and then publish it when i want it published. it works for me, since my blog is new and i’m not to the point where i’m posting every day… i’m sure it’s a much bigger hassle for those who are posting once a day or more!
June 20th, 2007 at 11:26 am
That’s definitely the easiest and best solution - especially for blogs that don’t post everyday.
July 8th, 2007 at 12:01 am
What do you do when on holidays or away from a computer or something?
June 20th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I did some playing with this, and found that with the smart update pinger plugin installed, pings did not happen when publishing a timestamped post, and also did not happen when the post was finally shown!
So I can safely use timestamping, but have to remember to manually ping now and then.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
That’s exactly what I’m doing right now Jay. It’s a good method for us ’stubborn’ folks that just want to freaking use our timestamps.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I timestamped a post to show up about 5 minutes ago which it did and I just checked technorati and it was not listed. but when I checked google blog search, it was listed. Maybe technorati is slower in updating posts?
June 20th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Very interesting…. When did you actually click the publish button?
June 20th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I checked technorati about 10 minutes after posting the last comment and my post showed up.
I clicked the publish button on Sunday or Monday night.
June 20th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Hi Court,
I was aware of the problem and installed Smart Update Pinger.
I’ve only tested this twice, but it seems that Smart Update Pinger looks upon a timestamped post as an update and therefore doesn’t ping.
It’s only half of the solution, because you still have to ping manually, but at least it doesn’t ping too early.
Maybe you could give it a try. I really would be interested in your results.
Regards,
Case
June 26th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
hey Courtney,
According to an active poster on the Wordpress support boards,
“With 2.1, the post pings at the time given for it publishing and showing up on the webpage.
So if you do a future post, it won’t ping until it actually posts.”
I’ll double check at Wordcamp to see if the statement is accurate.
Regards,
Chris Jara
BlogHacking.com
July 11th, 2007 at 1:46 am
I am developing an updated version of the “Smart Update Pinger” plugin that will ping services even for future-timed posts. Anyone interested?
July 20th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Plugin is finished. Contact me at ping.plugin NOSPAM-AT better-business-directory NOSPAM-DOT com if you’re interested in it. It doesn’t only know the difference between future or normal posts, but it also pings correctly (which neither WP nor SUP did) with the “updated url”
August 17th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
[…] read on Make Money Online Free With Court that using timestamps along with pinging can result in you not getting the traffic you should. I am […]
September 24th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
i am in the uk, what timezone should i set my posts for as the us has 3 timezones! or does it matter?
September 24th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
I don’t think timezone matters nearly as much as when you post.
The short answer is that it depends on where your readership is (or, perhaps, where you’d like it to be).
The point of this article, of course, is that setting a timestamp on your posts in the future doesn’t actually initiate a ping at the scheduled time, so you either have to do so manually or post immediately after you write. It doesn’t have anything to do with timezones as a blog setting. Court is simply advising us to be mindful of our readers and their consumption patterns.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:16 am
[…] How Setting Your Blog To Ping Could Hurt Your Traffic […]
November 16th, 2007 at 10:29 am
[…] timestamp most of my Wordpress posts. The other day, I came across a recent conversation about how Wordpress pings the services when you hit “publish”, not when the post goes live. This is not good; you can read more about it […]
February 26th, 2008 at 7:10 am
[…] week I was reading an article by Courtney Tuttle, How Setting your blog to ping could hurt your traffic. I haven´t been using the timestamp feature on this blog, but I had been using it on others, […]