It basically means you send http requests from your domain to other websites, and people will click on the link to your blog/site when they see it in their traffic analytic software. You can also get traffic because some sites have a recent referral widget which displays the URLs of sites that have sent traffic.
oh so i write an article about their site and then when they get pinged for the link then they know that i did that ?
Theoretically, but in reality people don't check referral sites enough to give substantial traffic back. Unless of course you are sending them a whole lot of traffic, but even then the best you can get is a click from the owner of the site (the person checking the traffic stats) or a click from users via the "last referrers widget." Generally, this method of getting traffic doesn't work manually. There are programs however that automate the process (sending pings to thousands of websites in minutes), which actually can get you some decent traffic.
but then would i have to have thousands of links on my sites ? sorry to be such a noobie about this ping stuff
It's pretty much useless traffic. I wouldn't bother much with this method. If, those links are nofollow because they are mostly posted under comments.
thanks big . . . it sounds like it would take time away from effective marketing .. . but i might do it on a site like www.WebmasterConventions.org because that is a webmaster site and the traffic would be targeted. So i guess in some instances this "ping" may work out. I will have to see and let you guys know Thanks for everyones help explaining what in the world "pinging" was