Struggling with spam trackbacks cluttering your older WordPress posts? Trackbacks and pingbacks were designed to notify blogs of incoming links, but today they're a favorite tool for spammers. In this step-by-step guide, we'll show you how to disable them across all existing posts efficiently.
Back in the early blogging days, trackbacks and pingbacks helped blogs alert each other to new links.
For example, if you link to a friend's blog post from your article, WordPress automatically sends a pingback to their site.
This notification lands in their comment moderation queue with a link back to your content.
Unfortunately, spammers now exploit this feature, flooding queues with thousands of junk links—even with plugins like Akismet, some slip through.
WordPress lets you disable it site-wide via Settings » Discussion, by unchecking Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles.
This only affects new posts, though. Existing ones remain vulnerable, and WordPress may even generate pingbacks when you link to them internally. Check our guide on disabling auto pingbacks in WordPress for more.
Here's how to handle existing posts quickly.
Head to Posts » All Posts and click Screen Options in the top-right corner.
Set 'Number of items per page' to 999 and hit Apply.
This loads up to 999 posts per page.
Select all by checking the box next to the title column.
From the Bulk Actions dropdown, choose Edit and click Apply.
In the bulk edit panel, locate the Pings option and set it to Do Not Allow.
Click Update to apply changes across all selected posts.
If you have more than 999 posts, repeat on the next pages.
This simple bulk method secures your site against spam trackbacks. For more, explore our tips and tools to fight WordPress comment spam.
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