Under Settings->Discussion there is the following option:
[x]Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)
Whats the real benefit for a blog owner to have them enabled? (besides knowing who is linking your content i mean)
Is there any downside in turning that off?
Thanks a lot
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they are pretty useless, in fact I would say they are even a nuisance. The idea was novel when it first came out and it was for a brief moment useful, but those days are over.
I never enable pingbacks because they seem to actually discourage discussion, and are highly abused by SEO spam.
Trackbacks might be interesting from an analytic perpective and slightly useful for the users but I still turn them off, because they also discourage discussion and attract spam.
Ask yourself how many times have you clicked a trackback, have you ever read a pingback??
As toscho has pointed out, sold/outdated sites can start to return spam pingbacks/trackbacks that were at one point valid, in fact I bet there is a market for this.
The pingback system is automated so your loss of control over it has attracted spammers because it’s easy to abuse.
The web has evolved away from this type of service because it prefers actual people ( And the search engines try to reflect that as well).
Pingbacks and trackbacks are useful because they create two-way connection between similar pages and users can browse relevant articles. IMHO, two-ways linking is the main idea of the internet and why it was build.
Install Akismet or similar plugin if you are afraid of spam.