How often pinging a site is 'useful pinging'?

[xyz]

I'm not even sure I really understand what it achieves exactly!
Is it something like telling many search engines that your site exists?
How often do it like here Ping-o-Matic! (http://pingomatic.com/)

I just can't imagine myself pinging all day long...
Thx for reading.

[goatflyer]

Ping-o-matic's service name is the source of the confusion. They don't actually 'ping' the search engines, in the same way as


ping -c1 www.google.com

does. That would achieve little except proving they have connectivity to google.

What I understand their service does (based on their description) is they examine your site or blog, and check for any changes to it since the last time they checked. They don't say how frequently they check your site, but I'm guessing its probably not too often or else they would have too much traffic to sort through.

When they detect a change, they send "site updated" messages to all the common search engines.

In a sense, your site is the one being "pinged" -- here meaning visited -- hopefully infrequently enough not to skew your traffic statistics.

[argie]

To add:
I know wordpress allows you to inform pingomatic that you've updated.

[xyz]

Thanks for the replies folks! Have a 'pinging' day!