[1][3] The site was powered by receiving pings from individual blog and podcast websites using weblogUpdates.ping() calls over the XML-RPC protocol.
[1] The server protocol was later adopted by FeedBurner's Pingshot, Automattic's Ping-O-Matic, Google Blogsearch,[4][5][6] Källström's Twingly,[7] and others.
Similarly, aggregators use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material.
[12][13][14] As of 2016, most blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.
Typically, an individual spam post links to some external page that displays Google ads or offers a product for sale.