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Track trackbacks with Google Reader

I've been using Google Reader for over three years now. I also use it to store my bookmarks. I learnt about yet another use for Google Reader besides following feeds. Chris Heilmann uses Google Reader to be notified about trackbacks to his blog (& he actually discovered that there was a spam blog running surreptitously from his domain).

Trackbacks, just in case you didn't know, are the messages typically displayed in the comments list of your blog whenever another blog links back to one of your posts. Trackbacks are fun because you get to know who is following you as well as in what context they are using your material.

Here are the steps to  track trackbacks with Google Reader (or any other feed reader of your choice) -
  1. Search for back-links to your blog on Google Blog Search using the link: operator
  2. Subscribe to the Atom or RSS feed of the results in Google Reader

Now, rather than check manually for trackbacks for each indvidual post or be notified about each of them by email, view them all at one place while you follow your other feeds.