Hey jlake – I know this is an old post but recently I have been working on RPC ping servers.
I wrote and article here where I analyzed all the common ping lists and and their effectiveness and value.
In response to a query regarding the impact of over pinging, I mentioned the following;
“…Regarding duplicate pings – I believe the warnings about over-pinging are overrated. I base this on two factors
a) Most of the Ping Lists I have seen out there (I have punched over a 1000 through ThePingList) have duplicates in them and / or have targets that are also included in multi pingers such as PingoMatic. If the over-pinging issue was so valid – about 8.6 billion blogs would now be blocked.
b) Through my testing and requests through ThePingList, I have made some 3000 pings using the same dummy url and I am yet to have any of my ping tests rejected.
HOWEVER, I would not go as so far as saying dont care about duplicates because
a) I could be wrong or an idiot
b) By default your WordPress installation may ping on each edit – so if you are like me you go through a lot of typo’s – you pinging a lot, no need to ping “alotx2″
c) I would suspect that some of the more formal services – ie google and yahoo – would have counters associated with detecting spam
d) It doesnt matter whether the requests from ThePingList get blocked because I can bounce them via proxies all over the planet – you cant do that from your blog.
In summary I would suggest that it is prudent, economical and good internet citizenship to keep your ping lists to as unique targets as possible…”
