I remember a while back I used to ping a pretty decent sized list of ping services on every blog post. It would take at least 15 to 20 seconds to process.

Now (in wordpress 2.3) I hit the publish button and it only takes about 3 to 5 seconds with the same list.

I know pinging also used to bring me a decent amount of traffic and that doesn't seem to be the case lately. I'm concerned wordpress isn't actually pinging the services.

How do I check to ensure the pings are actually updating the services?

Or am I just paranoid and wordpress 2.3 has become more efficient at pinging so it doesn't take as long?

If you have your blog claimed at Technorati, you can see when it was last pinged if I remember correctly. That is, assuming Technorati is one of the services you're pinging, but if not.. it should be!