What is Ping

[infoconsultants]

I am sorry if I posted it in the wrong section.

I have seen people in services section saying that they will create web 2.0 properties to promote my website and they will ping those pages.

I tried searching what ping actually means in context of search engines but could not find something that would make sense to me.

I would be thankful if someone can explain to me

1) what do you mean by "Ping your web 2.0 pages to different sites" ?
2) Is it done manually or through some tools(softwares,scripts etc)

Thanks for your time

[Deus Ex]

It is done through scripts OR software and it is just done server-side or client-side (computer software). Pinging is usually connected with blogs but can also be connected to other areas such as pinging pages using things like ping-o-matic as well as other scripts/software.

Definition:

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more "ping servers," which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.

Open ping servers, like VeriSign's Weblogs.com, let other web services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them. Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. Similarly, aggregators use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material.