I’m at a loss as to what to do with pingback spam. On one hand it really doesn’t do much, and I’ve only had a small handfull of them so far. It isn’t cluttering up the pages, they aren’t burying legitimate comments, and they aren’t linking back to adult or spyware sites. But they are still a form of spam.
On the other hand, they are linking back to me from their pseudo-blog sites, so they are providing a place for exposure to my blog. This can also help with search engine relevance since there are more sites linking back to me. But they’re still a form of spam.
I need to do some research and see what others are doing about it, if anything. Akismet is blocking a majority of them, so I need to see if I should let it continue to block them, or if I should go ahead and allow them through. So far I’ve allowed them through if they’re using an excerpt of my post and/or a related posting, but there are so few that it will only take a moment to cull them if I decide that is the best route to go.