I use the excellent Google Reader to read the feeds of all the various blogs I’m subscribed to, and I’ve noticed that some blogs are updated much faster than others.
I’ll occasionally visit a blog through a comment link for example, and see they’ve put new posts up, yet when I checked Google Reader, they weren’t there. Sure enough, it can be anything from 5 or 6 hours right through to the next day before the feed is updated.
Conversely, I’ve just checked some posts I’ve put up on my other blog, and they are available in Google Reader (and thus to Google searches – I just checked) in less than 1 hour after posting and I can only put this down to one thing: Pinging.
In WordPress, you can add to the list of services that you ping to update whenever you publish a new post. From your dashboard, it’s in Options/Writing and then ‘Update Services’ at the bottom of the page. You can find the list of services I use at my Ping Services list page.
Two blogs that update very slowly in my reader (and hence why I’m often a day late to comment) are Andy Beards and Dosh Dosh. I wonder why, as if any two blogs are likely to be super optimised, it’s these two. Answers on a postcard (or a comment).
If your feed isn’t updating that fast, I hope these ping services make a difference for you.
Edit:
Arnold from Foreign Perspectives has kindly provided me with his ping list too:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
I think there’s only the one overlap there, so pick & choose what you want to add. Thanks Arnold 
With regard to the comments received, I don’t know how important this is, because I’m a hopeless amateur, but I do seem to get my posts indexed by the various services quickly, and I can only put it down to this. I’ve read a lot on the whole partial/delayed feeds idea, and all I can add is my personal take: I don’t visit blogs the ‘old fashioned’ way very often-it’s all done through my feed reader, so if you give me a partial feed, I’ll unsubscribe because there’s nothing to read, and if I unsubscribe I’ll probably forget to visit & you’ll lose me as a reader. Similarly, if your posts are significantly delayed, I won’t show up for a day or two, which is a problem if the post is time sensitive. But this is just me 
17 users commented in " Are You Pinging The Right People? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI wonder if those guys have just trimmed their ping list a while back and left out something vital?
It’s also possible that they are depending on something like pingomatic but that it in turn isn’t quite so quick off the mark to ping everything that it says it does.
Downside of a massive ping list is, of course, that it takes much longer to post things.
Just pinched your list. Interestingly, there was only one service in both our lists!
So, if you want to slow down your posting some more, drop me a line and I’ll mail you the extra 15 (can’t post it here ‘cos WP won’t let me post that many links here).
You’re right about the ping list possibly slowing down posting, but I’d say from clicking publish to the post appearing is still less than 2 seconds, so I can live with that.
Post the list if you want to Arnold, it’ll only go into moderation where I’ll release it, alternatively, post it onto your blog, and I’ll edit my post to link to it from here.
Aggregators are convenient for people like me who subscribe to over 100 feeds. However it might be less attractive to website owners who would actually like readers to visit their actual website…because in addition to reading their posts there are other “calls to action” that the site owner would like visitors to engage in ON the actual website. So if you want the latest, breaking news.post…you’re going to have to visit the site to get it. And, of course if you don’t NEED the lastest post when it is published then no problem it will ben in your RSS Aggregator….in awhile.
It is actual site visits that move one;s site up in organic search, right? Yeah, I can imagine several reason why site owners might want to support/increase their actual ON SITE visitors. Delayed RSS pick up is a way to do that IMHO.
Interesting post, Chris.
I’ve found that on average, my posts appear in my reader around one or two hours after publishing. This time varies however, and sometimes it can be much faster.
I’m curious about the variables.
There are currently just two links in my WP admin for pinging:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
My articles appear on the DesignFeed.net aggregator, sometimes immediately, other times in a day or two! I wonder why that is. It’s no biggy with DesignFeed, but I do get some good traffic from them so it’s something I’ve thought about.
Just added the FeedBurner URL from your list. Thanks.
I’m not so clued in with the others. Did you register your site with specific directories before adding all your Ping Services?
Maybe they don’t all apply to me in particular?
It depends slightly on how caching works on your feed reader.
I only use one ping URL, Feedburner who then ping other services for me, and included on that list are all the big ones, plus a bit of duplication with pingomatic.
I have found FeedBurner don’t live up to their ‘we check every 30 mins’ thing, but it is still important to give them a shout.
I didn’t register with any of these specifically David, I found this list somewhere about a day after I first installed WordPress and have used them ever since.
I’ve just found it annoying recently, how GR is slow to update some of my favourite reads, and this is all I can put it down to.
Apparently not, as I try to explain today.
I do know that Ian Kallen (aka Spidaman) at Technorati requested that you do not use 3rd party services like Pingomatic, and ping them directly if you have to. Otherwise let Feedburner or Weblogs do their thing.
The extra pinging (I think) raises a flag on their end and may errantly mark you as a splog — in which case your index there will not get updated. To clear it, you have to fill out a support ticket, unless they see it and clear it manually.
But I notice delays on various services from time to time, while the others update promptly. I am talking about Technorati, MyYahoo, GoogleReader, Bloglines. Sometimes one is slow, then later they are all good to go.
So I don’t know if it has anything to do with how you ping. Hell, I waited 4 hours for a post on BlogSpot to make it into my G-Reader — whats up with that?
Chris,
I’m not sure why my posts take so long to show up on Feedburner as well.
I’m using a ping list that has around 10 sites.. forgot where I actually got the list from.
I’ve just taken your list and used it instead of my own. Hopefully it’ll work better. Will try to update if I see any differences
I have heard the over-pinging story elsewhere, but I’ve been using this list for 6 months now, and so far the only result has been very fast indexing. I do accept the point though, which is why even if I write 5 posts in one sitting I timestamp them at least an hour, if not more, apart. Give both readers and feed services a breather!
Hey Maki, hope it helps
Hey, I asked this via email, but thought I’d go ahead and post here too…
I know that in WordPress, you can add to the list of services to automatically ping whenever new content is published. I wondered if anyone has any tips on how to do something similar with a Blogger-based blog.
Or, if nothing else, maybe some way to hit all of those sites in your Ping Services List manually after publishing a new post on Blogger. Maybe there’s some kind of script I could manually fire off?
I typically use PingGoat & Pingomatic, but that seems to only catch a portion of the possible ping sites.
@Rob – There is no known way in Blogger to ping multiple services.
But, I have been using ScribeFire for Firefox which adds a few functions that are lacking in Blogger.
One is you can Ping multiple sources when you publish. Included in the list are Pingomatic, Technorati, Weblogs, Blo.gs, Blogrolling and IceRocket. Currently I ping Technorati, Weblogs and IceRocket when I post.
The other feature, which Blogger should have adopted years ago, is the ability to send Trackbacks. As soon as you publish, bam, it shows up on the other site.
You can also embed Technorati tags into the body of your post. This is accomplished via a simple text box with comma seperated tags. If you have a Delicious account, you can opt in to post your tags there as well.
@Chris – I am using the three mentioned above and it seems to work fairly well. I have not had any problems with it. If I knew how to hack the javascript in ScribeFire, I could probably add your list into it — maybe I will look into that one of these days.
Nice tip on ScribeFire Mr Dodger
that sounds extremely useful for Blogger users.
It is useful for even WordPress users, Mr. Lodge.
The interface sits in a size-adjustable pane in the lower part of your browser. You can browse and draft your post from one screen. This is handy for pulling quotes from other blogs, grabbing links, compiling across multiple blogs, etc.
The entry form is HUGE. You can switch views to Html editing and Preview. Another tabbed screen will show you Technorati and Web backlinks to the page you are viewing in the browser.
I can go on & on about it.
You’ve sold me, I’ll check it out
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