“pinging” in the context of blogging is a way to tell the different websites that compile blog posts that you have added new content to your blog. This would include sites like technorati or feedburner, and other similar blog post aggregators. 
In the way of an update on my post earlier today about the new Google Blog Search Tool, Google just announced today that they will allow you to ping them with your blog’s URL address if it is not already included in thier index. First you may want to do a search on the Google Blog Search tool to see if it is in the results… If it isn’t, fire away. Here is the link to add your blog URL or feed. I would recommend entering your atom, rss, or xml feed so that Google bot won’t have any trouble finding it (Google has stated that it primarily uses rss to update it’s blog search index)
So, the question is… should you ping your blog posts? Will it somehow help you get more exposure? In my opinion, it probably won’t. Unless you are in the top 100 of all blogs, pinging probably won’t do too much for you. It can definately be helpful if you have a new blog and want to let all the blog collecting websites out there know that you exist, but in the way of driving more traffic… I doubt it.
But, hey, you might as well be on the safe side right? Try this free pinging service that will ping all of the most important sites for you all at one time: ping-o-matic
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- Google Launches New Blogger Friendly Search Service
- The Ultimate Guide to RSS
- All Blogs Google…
- A Rare Look Into the Mind of Google…
- Is Creating Creative Content a Completely Contrived Curse of Crazy Conspirators?