Robin over at MasterNewMedia.org has written this article about where to submit your RSS feeds and weblog URLs to get more exposure, visibility and reach. If you’re a blogger, your blogging software (ie. Wordpress) most likely has an automatic method that makes it easy and quick to notify directories of any updates on your blog. This feature is called XML-RPC ping.

Technical Background of XML-RPC Pings

The name XML-RPC is a combination of two acronyms. XML is nothing more than a distinct alphabet used to communicate between two computers connected to the Internet. RPC stands for Remote Procedure Call, which means that you are executing a command on one computer that controls the the behavior of a separate system on the internet, so that the remote computer properly executes the request.

A ping is just term used to describe one computer sending a signal to another computer over a computer network (like the internet), while expecting a response.

To really get into what XML-RPC pings really are, we could be here all day and night while I explain the technical details behind the technology.

Pings are just one of the aspects of the XML-RPC web services. Another application of XML-RPC would be the remote creation and posting of articles. You could use an application on your computer to create and post your article (or blog post) to your online blog without ever logging on to your blog’s administration backend.

Importance of XML-RPC Pings

The nice thing about XML-RPC specifications is that it allows computers to talk to one another. Regardless of the Operating System in use on each of the machines. This means that it does not matter if you’re running MS Windows, MacOS, Linux, or any of the other Operating Systems out there. There is more to be said about Ping services though. Usually, directories and aggregators find out that a blog has been updated by checking the RSS feed every thirty minutes. This is NOT a very efficient method! Think of all that wasted bandwidth!!

XML-RPC Pings, on the other hand, only notify a directory when a blog entry is published for the first time. Subsequent actions to the blog entry do not trigger the Ping service to be triggered. This way, anyone that requires notification of updated content has instant and reliable notification to suit their needs.

Requirements for using XML-RPC Pings

On the sending side, popular blog applications like Blogger, Wordpress, MoveableType, etc typically provide a setting in the administration backend preferences and settings area that allows you to specify which directories supporting XML-RPC to ping. On the receiving side, most directories supporting XML-RPC have a developer’s section on their web sites mentioning the URL to use.

Ping-o-Matic and Other Multi-Pinging Resources

Ping-o-Matic stands out because it was the first well-known resource to take care of notifying all the different directories and aggregators by sending multiple XML-RPC Pings simultaneously. Ping-o-Matic offers a web form as well as an XML-RPC interface of it’s own. The Ping-o-Matic web form requires that you manually choose the services that you would like to notify of your changes. The XML-RPC interface, on the other hand, takes care of all of that for you automatically, although not covering all the services available on the web form.

Ping-o-Matic no longer is the only solution for multi-directory pinging. There are many others with the same or similar capabilities and different directories and features. Some of these include:

• Pingoat - notifies over 50 sites, some of which are very specialized.
• King Ping - ping some standard web feeds as well as a few podcasting feeds.
• BlogFlux - just another of the multi-focused blog related services that accept Ping updates.
• Feed Shark - requires individual clicking of the resources to ping.
• BlogBlip - features similar services to those of Ping-o-Matic, with the ability to add custom services as well.
• FeedShot - automatic submission to the search engines. An email address, although not required, can be entered for confirmations.
• Smart Update Pinger - replaces the built-in Wordpress RPC-XML Ping service with many improvements.

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