The moment you start getting more traffic on your blog, those harvesting it for their own petty interests will show up instantly: spam commentators and trackbacks of doubtful quality. While comment moderation is something most bloggers are paying attention to, as it is easy to implement and dedicated plugins make it a bliss, there’s a different story for trackbacks.

First because having your blog quoted on a different site generally means your writing is appreciated and spread among new readers. Most of the times it comes from blogs with common interests, from bloggers who just happened to run into your article and love it or from friends helping you out in your promoting endeavors. Plus, if it’s a quote and if it gives proper credit, there’s no harm done!

But there are two types of link-backs I’ve ran across that can harm a blog more than you can imagine. And there are two things you can look for when trying to prevent such mischievous usage of your content:

• what quote is really linked to your name or blog name
• what else the blogger posts on the page where you’re quoted

Why is this important, you might wonder? I’ll share my experiences with you to better explain my point.

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