WordPress has the ability to receive and send pings/trackbacks from and to other sites. At WPBeginner we receive hundreds of spam trackbacks daily. In the past due to our theme structure, we had the trackbacks hidden however now when using livefyre we ran into the problem of having trackbacks and pings showing below our posts. First thing we did was disabled trackbacks and pings from the Settings » Discussions page. However that does not change the status on existing posts. In this article, we will show you how to disable trackbacks on existing WordPress posts.
This tutorial requires you to run a MySQL query, so we highly recommend that you backup your database before executing the query.
First, you need to login to phpMyAdmin and locate your WordPress database. (Below is a screenshot of a HostGator cPanel)
You need to click on the SQL tab:
And execute the following query:
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post'; UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'page';
And you are done 
Now all of your existing published WordPress posts will have trackbacks disabled as well.
Thanks nice article and useful!!!
Thanks for this, they were beginning to drive me nuts.
Run via WordPress database manager, work like a charm.
The other post explaining Trackbacks and Pingbacks is the first explanation I have read that allowed me to really understand the situation.
This post allowed me to easily clear old trackbacks and pings despite having no SQL background – being able to copy the code out of the post is great.
Finally, I installed No Self Pings plugins on my sites so that should have got rid of that annoyance.
Great work guys.
Thanks for this helpful post. I’m quite relieved not to have to worry about the trackbacks filling up my comments anymore.
Thanks for the clear explanation of what a trackback or ping back is, and why they are unhelpful. I should have read this before enabling them on our Kanda blog, as they have been getting worse over time.
Luckily your explanation of how to disable them on existing posts was equally good, thanks again.
Thanks a lot. I didn’t understand at first why I still received trackbacks even though I disabled it.
I tried running this, and it appeared to be successful. However, I still see the pingbacks showing on the blog.
This does not delete existing trackbacks. It just disables future ones on existing posts.
It doesn’t work, get a message:
#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ’2 UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status=’closed’ WHERE post_status = ‘publish’ AND pos’ at line 1
@DiviningMind It seems like that your code was cut off? Please make sure that there is no extra space / returns in the code. Not sure if it was the error that cut the code off, or you didn’t have the last post_type bit.
Also you have to adjust the tables name accordingly. If you are not using the default wp_ structure, then you should adjust for that.
@Rigger82 Thanks for the heads up and your feedback Chris. We’ll pass this to our dev team for investigation and keep you updated.
@reycalantaol http://t.co/JMHsacy
@wpbeginner Ok I understand with that. I just confuse how the spammers get a traffic from the trackback? I mean what do the trackbacks do to give them more traffic?
@how to remove skin tagsI am so excited that I have found this your post because I have been searching for some information about it almost three hours. You helped me a lot indeed and reading this your article I have found many new and useful information about this subject
@ReyCalantaol Trackbacks cause a lot of SPAM…. As your site gets popular, you will notice people will just copy your content and then send a trackback to your site, so they can get traffic to content that they plagirized from your site…
What is the advantage of disabling trackbacks and pings from the post? I read some tutorials and they said that it can help your site gain more traffic but I still don’t know how.
@roraz We use no self ping plugin as well. But that only disables your own site from sending ping not other sites…
I used http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-self-ping/ to achieve this, though I guess this would be handy if you didn’t want too many plugins running in the background of your site!
Thanks for the explanation about removing track backs. The tutorial in explained in lucid way.