I Got My First Blog "Comments" — They Were Fake (What WordPress Pingbacks Actually Are)

Ten days into running this blog, I opened my WordPress dashboard and saw something that made my heart skip a beat:

“2 comments pending approval.”

첫 댓글이다! (First comments!)

Someone actually read my blog. Someone cared enough to leave a comment. Maybe two someones! I was already mentally composing my thoughtful, gracious reply. This was it — the first sign of real engagement.

I asked Claude to check what the comments said.

And then the disappointment hit.

They Weren’t Real Comments

The two “comments” sitting in my pending queue weren’t from humans at all. They were pingbacks — automated notifications that WordPress generates when one blog post links to another.

Here’s what actually happened:

Comment 1: My “How I Talk to Claude Code Using Screenshots” post linked to my “How to Install Claude Code” post → WordPress auto-generated a pingback on the install post
Comment 2: My “Telegram Bot Part 3” post linked to “Telegram Bot Part 1” → same thing, another auto-pingback

Both were sitting there with comment_approved: 0, looking exactly like real comments in the dashboard notification. WordPress was literally talking to itself and pretending it was engagement.

What Are WordPress Pingbacks, Exactly?

Pingbacks are an old WordPress feature from the early days of blogging — we’re talking mid-2000s era. The idea was simple and actually kind of cool at the time:

Blog A writes a post and links to Blog B
Blog A sends an automatic notification (a “pingback”) to Blog B
Blog B displays this as a comment, creating a cross-blog conversation

Back when blogging was a tight-knit community and everyone read each other’s posts, this made sense. It was like a decentralized social network before social networks existed.

In 2026? It’s mostly useless.

Why Pingbacks Are a Problem Today

Self-pingbacks are pointless. When YOUR post links to YOUR other post, you don’t need a notification about it. You already know.
They clutter your comment section. Pingbacks show up as “comments” but contain no actual content — just a link back to the referring post.
Spammers exploit them. Pingback spam is a real thing. Spammy sites link to your posts just to get their URL into your comments section.
They can hurt SEO. A comment section full of pingback URLs instead of real discussion signals low-quality engagement to search engines.
They create false excitement. As I just experienced firsthand. That “2 comments pending” notification was a lie.

How I Disabled Pingbacks (Without Even Opening WordPress Admin)

Since I manage this entire blog from the terminal using WP-CLI (because of course I do — I’m a developer), here’s exactly what I did:

Step 1: Delete the Fake Comments

wp comment list --type=pingback --allow-root
wp comment delete [comment_id] --force --allow-root

Gone. Both of them.

Step 2: Disable Pingbacks Permanently

# Stop sending pingbacks when you link to other sites
wp option update default_pingback_flag 0 --allow-root

# Stop accepting pingbacks from other sites
wp option update default_ping_status closed --allow-root

# Keep real comments open (we still want those!)
wp option update default_comment_status open --allow-root

Three commands. Done. No need to navigate through WordPress admin panels, no clicking through settings menus.

If You Prefer the WordPress Admin Way

For those who aren’t terminal-obsessed like me:

Go to Settings → Discussion
Uncheck “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the post”
Uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts”
Save changes

That’s it. Do this on day one of your WordPress blog. Future you will thank you.

The Silver Lining

Yes, I was disappointed. No, those weren’t real readers engaging with my content. But here’s what I actually learned:

WordPress has a lot of legacy features that are enabled by default and shouldn’t be. Pingbacks are just one of them.
Internal linking is working. The fact that pingbacks existed means my posts are properly linking to each other — that’s actually good for SEO.
I found a blog post topic. My disappointment became content. That’s the vibe coding blogger mindset right there.
Real engagement will come. Ten days is nothing. The blog needs more content, more time for search engines to index, more value to offer readers. When real comments come, I’ll appreciate them even more.

Quick Checklist for New WordPress Bloggers

If you just set up your WordPress blog, here’s what to disable/configure right away:

☐ Disable pingbacks (Settings → Discussion)
☐ Disable trackbacks (same page, same reason)
☐ Install anti-spam plugin (Akismet or similar) for when real comments start coming
☐ Set comment moderation rules (hold comments with links for review)
☐ Keep comments open — you DO want real engagement, just not fake ones

Most Korean WordPress resources don’t even mention pingbacks because they’re such an obscure, legacy feature. But if you’re running a WordPress blog and you see “comments pending” that turn out to be your own posts talking to each other — now you know what happened.

How This Post Was Made

I saw “2 comments” in my WordPress dashboard. I got excited. I asked Claude to check what the comments said. Claude told me they were just pingbacks — WordPress auto-notifications, not real human comments. I got disappointed.

Then I asked Claude to delete the pingbacks, disable the feature, and write a blog post about my disappointment. At least I got content out of it.

The entire process — from discovering the fake comments to publishing this post — was done through Claude Code in the terminal. I never opened the WordPress admin dashboard once.

This post was written with Claude AI. I provided the direction, topic, and key points in Korean — Claude turned it into the article you just read.

I Got My First Blog “Comments” — They Were Fake (What WordPress Pingbacks Actually Are)