How does wordpress know about incoming links?

Introduction_to_Blogging has a discussion of Trackbacks and Pingbacks.

Also see Update_Services

Not so sure that answers my question. If someone places me in their blogroll, should wordpress know about it? Is this the pingback and trackback feature? It’s very confusing and I don’t see anywhere yet where it’s laid out conceptually. Lots of geek speak.

If someone places you in their blogroll, its no different than if someone adds a link to your site on a plain old HTML page. Its a link. Its not a trackback, and its not a pingback. If you read the explaination of what those are, you will notice that have very specific uses.

The incoming links area in your dashboard grabs data from Google — data that GOOGLE sees as it spiders sites. Once Google finds the link, you will see it there (presumedly).

As far as “managing”, you will need to be a little more specific. You cannot manage whether or not someone else links to you. Managing, to me, implies control.

Control…Heh…that gave me a good laugh.

I’m just attempting to understand hot pings and tracks work, how they are utilized best, and actually make them work between my two separate blogs so I can actually see the function in a real scenario.

I just created a new blog with a new database from scratch and out of nowhere I have two incoming links.

I also posted to blog A and in that post I linked to another post on blog A and the article FROM which I posted became a comment on my blog, automatically. Totally confused about that.

Totally confused about that.

Which means you didn’t read carefully the resources MichaelH offered above. Those describe in details what the pingbacks and the trackbacks are.

They have nothing to do with the incoming links section in your dashboard. That’s a separate issue.

1. If I make a post and in its text I link to one of your posts (aka to the permalink) – it will be a Pingback.
2. If I use the trackback (TB) url of a post of yours and while writing a post of mine I put that URL in the TB field below my content area – it will be a TB.
Both #1 and #2 will appear on your site among the comments.
3. If I put a link to your site in my sidebar (for example) – that will be an incoming link in the dashboard. Earlier it was done through Technorati; since v. 2.3 via Google.

pingbacks and trackbacks — think of them as remote comments.

they serve a nearly identical purpose, but use a different protocols.

the link provided to you above ….