September 22, 2005
PingShot: Speedy Content Distribution for Everybody
If you use FeedBurner, we now provide a service that notifies aggregators, search engines, and directories about your content updates as quickly as possible. When you use the new PingShot service, we will 'ping' a collection of services that you choose whenever we detect that your feed has new content. It's that simple. Select the new PingShot service for your feed from the "Publicize" tab, and you're done.
Podcast-Sensitive
PingShot is smart about whether your feed is primarily a podcast feed or not. If it is primarily a podcast feed, a different set of default notifications are sent, and a few different choices about who you want to notify are presented. For example, podcast feeds automatically notify Odeo by default, but non-podcast feeds do not notify Odeo by default, because that would be silly.
There are other nitty gritty details about this service, so let's dive into those.
Open Registry
PingShot presents aggregators, directories, and search engines with an open ping registry, so that any service can participate in this service, not just those that we know about or decide to include. A third party application server that would like to be included as one of the notification options may submit their service name and ping interface to us, and we'll go through a process here to validate that it's functioning appropriately and then include it as an option. (Note: Blog publishers and podcasters safely can ignore this — it's a link for web service providers only!) As we begin to manage more feeds around the world, there is simply no way that we'll keep up on our own with language and geography-specific aggregators, search engines, etc. and an open registry hopefully addresses this.
Spam!
We have built several mechanisms into PingShot that are designed to make it useless to blog spammers. Some of these are reflected in the way the interface and service work, but more of these are designed into our ping algorithm and will be adjusted as we monitor how the service is used. Our goal is to make all of our services as simple as possible for real publishers and as useless as possible for spammers and other naughty types.
Determining Default Services
We have relationships with all of the default services, and through these relationships, we are comfortable that we know where to go when there are issues, we know that we're not going to get rate limited, we are working with these companies to manage the flow of inappropriate updates, and we have confidence that we can work together to make PingShot a more compelling service over time. Our approach is to slowly add services to the default list as we build more relationships instead of remove services from the default list if we can't figure out how to work with the organization. These lists will undoubtedly evolve over time.
Mini FAQ
1. Why isn't XYZ service on your list?
We're still in the process of adding some known services to the list, and we're probably missing a bunch. We added and tested our defaults and pulled some others from a common relay point. It's open, so submit the service, and we'll add it after we've had a chance to test it. Everybody can play.
2. So does this replace Ping-O-Matic or other ping services?
No. This is a passive "set and forget" service and only functions for publishers for whom we are managing feeds. We check your feed, and IF your content has been updated since we last checked, then we initiate our ping algorithm and notify the publisher-selected channels that there has been an update. You can use our service to notify Ping-O-Matic, which will in turn relay updates to other services.
3. Are you paying attention to RSS Ping? What about FeedMesh? Are you familiar with the Atom stream that Brad implemented for Six Apart? Are you afraid of Virginia Woolf?
You betcha. We know David and Matt have thought carefully and thoroughly about notifications, and we are paying close attention to their work. Our system has been architected to fully support their specification. There is quite a bit of community interest and effort around notification services, obviously, and we'll try to make sure we do our part to be a good citizen.
4. How can I submit my service to PingShot?
If you want your service to know when FeedBurner feeds have been updated (aggregators, search engines, podcast directories — this means you), just contact us.
5. This is getting long. Can you sum up?
We're delighted to launch another free service to help our publishers get more value from the content they create. More FAQs here. Back to work.
Comments
Great new service! Thanks!
How about adding Blogrolling?
Wow, this sounds fantastic! I know that several of my clients have a hard enough time with the web tools I've taught them already and asking them to incorporate pinging into their posting routine, utilizing one more service, is sometimes just too much. To have it automated is great and all the more reason for me to send them through Feedburner for their RSS needs.
It seems like you're handling this really well and I'll be excited to hear a podcast about it!
This is great, visiting Ping-O-Matic each time I blog can get tiresome.
But at the risk of sounding dim; if I ping Ping-O-Matic using PingShot, how does Ping-O-Matic know which services to ping?
Also some services (e.g. Technorati) are pinged by Ping-O-Matic, so I guess I should avoid pinging them through PingShot?
Few months ago I suggested you to use rpc.pingomatic.com.
Today I'm happy to see you have found probably a better idea (or you use also rpc.pingomatic.com?).
Stephen:
"If I ping Ping-O-Matic using PingShot, how does Ping-O-Matic know which services to ping?"
Little known fact -- if you ping Ping-O-Matic via their API, it pings all the services they include.
"Also some services (e.g. Technorati) are pinged by Ping-O-Matic, so I guess I should avoid pinging them through PingShot?"
Don't worry about it too much. But remember, they're not going to update your feed twice as fast if you double-ping :-)
Ok, I am afraid to ask in case I've misunderstood all this since I'm so DANG excited at the possibility you seem to be offering.
I have an aggregator that wants to know when fresh content has been published. Some of the community I service use blogger. If they sign up for a feedburner feed, and you have the details of my aggregator, they will be able to ping my aggregator through your service?
Do I have that right? Please say yes. Please say yes!
:)
Mark,
Yes!
Use the form mentioned in this post to submit your service and it will be added as an option after we get a chance to test it.
Mark: That's exactly right. Tell us all about your aggregator, and then our publishers can have you automatically pinged when they update their feeds.
(This assumes that your aggregator is itself accepting pings, working properly, etc etc. We review each submission before adding it to PingShot.)
Well that just ROCKS! Thanks so much Dick!
Umm...just one problem. I'm having trouble with some of the form questions. Namely: service method, xml-rpc method and the next three boxes.
the place my members ping is:
http://completerunning.com/running-blogs/xmlrpc.php
Can you help me sort this out?
Thanks a ton,
Mark
I am so glad that I've partnered with FB. Rock on! :)
I must be really missing something, as I read the post and replies a couple of times. I even searched on the forum to see if I can find an answer because I hate looking dumb.
Here is my question. How do people who use Feedburner feeds use the Pingshot service. Is there a place on our feed to select the Pingshot and select services we want to ping. I've looked around and can't seem to find one. Maybe you guys should go back to square one for my sake as i am not a service, just a blogger who uses your service for his feeds.
Hi Bruce, no problem, what you want to do is up there in the first paragraph. Just go to the Publicize tab for your feed and turn on PingShot if you want us to notify other search engines and aggregators when your feed is updated.
If we use Pingomatic or any of these one click pinging services regularly - what additional benefit will Pingshot provide?
Dear Chris Fye,
Thank you for answering the concerns in my weblog
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/feedbuner-pingshot-is-only-duplicating.html
Much Appreciated.
Amit.
Hi Quick Online Tips. updated comment: chris frye, our vp engineering, does a great job of addressing your questions (and others) in his comments on Amit's post:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/feedbuner-pingshot-is-only-duplicating.html
Just posted a glowing review of this service. You can find it on my blog.
Thanks for making Feedburner that much better. I now consider it a must have for any of my sites!
I started using Feedburner a couple of months ago. And you guys are just getting better and better. I love the feed optimization features. Easy to use, lots of features, etc.
(dumb) Question about:
"...This is a passive "set and forget" service and only functions for publishers for whom we are managing feeds. We check your feed, and IF your content has been updated since we last checked, then we initiate our ping algorithm and notify the publisher-selected channels that there has been an update..."
How does Pingshot know that we've updated our feed? Does it get notifications from weblogs or some other service? Or does it actually go out and check periodically? If someone posts several times a day, would it be better to ping manually and disable Pingshot?
Thanks
-J
Not a dumb question at all. FeedBurner checks your feed periodically (every 30 minutes) and when we detect updates, we notify all the sites you've chosen in PingShot (thus the play on SlingShot...we "catch" an update and then shoot it back out...aren't we clever?). So, no need really to go to the trouble of pinging us; we'll discover the update and then transmit it out to the world.
Woah that's pretty cool! Thanks for the quick answer. No doubt, this info would be great to add to the Pingshot page somewhere... unless it's already in there. I'm sure someone else wondered about that as well. That's a great time saver.
So, since Pingshot notifies all the major feed services, is there really any real advantage to doing the pinging manually? I mean you could ping a bunch of smaller services, but the ROI would be negligible. Better to focus on the quality of your posts than wasting time on the little fish, right? Besides, don't they all get their updates from the "big fishes" (major feed services) anyway?
If you disagree, can you give me an example of when doing it manually would give you a significant advantage as far as getting more exposure (assuming that's the goal)?
Thanks
-J
where is the "publicize" tab that allows one to sign up for the ping speedy delivery service? i don't see such a tab.
Gregg (and others),
The "Publicize" tab is visible when you're viewing a feed's details. Click any feed's title on your My Feeds page when signed into FeedBurner; the page that displays as a result has the Publicize tab, and you'll find PingShot there.
Ok so if we use the service you provide it would be better to not really ping anyone when we actually post and just let you guys take care of the rest?
By chance do you ping all of the feed services that you provide chicklets for?
Im assuming so, but figure should get an answer either way.
Thanks for making feed promotion easier and easier!!
Also, keep up the work with the ad-network...I think its a great expansion for your company.
I find Ping-O-matic better than pingoat which miss tecnocrati many times when i have pigged through goat!! is any desktop tool available for pinging those services?
Great service. Even though I just started out pinging my blogs, it sounds interesting!
Regards
I am kinda new to this blog pinging. It seems a way to sustain traffic for my dusted blogs.
Thanks!
will definitely take a look at PingShot. As of now I recommended ping o matic to interested bloggers or others who pinged their feeds.
One more reason why Feed Burner totaly rocks.
This is fantastic! My traffic is on the up after only a few days of using Feedburner for my site's blog. I love the "Publicize" tab! Now I don't even have to manually ping! Thanks for a giving me some extra minutes in my day.
Thanks for the great service. My blog and feed are related to my main site where I do Naturopathic consults for free online via forms and respond via email. Since I have been getting my feeds done from you guys I have seen a major growth in my hits and traffic, and I haven't been with you very long!! Awesome guys, just awsome. That's more peoples health helped naturally cause of your help!!
Thanks so much.
Craig Hitchens
I'm an aggregator - how do I access pingshot so I am automatically updated when the blogs we track are updated? Presume there is an API tucked away on the site somewhere? Thanks - TIM
