Sep
Avoid Looking Like an Idiot: Please Verify Pagerank
Ya so I made that big post yesterday about having a PR4 domain in my portfolio (gowforum.com). I made a post on Digitalpoint yesterday just entertaining some offers for the site. The thread got blasted with like 5 replies saying “FAKE PR!!” I felt under attack, and like potential buyers thought I was trying to rip them off. Honestly, I didn’t know the PR was fake. I don’t even know how to give a website fake PR.
One of the members gave me a link to a site called Valid Rank. You can read the Fake Pr Valid Rank Report. According to this site, my PR4 domain is stealing pagerank from another site. How fitting. This site gives you a huge warning at the top, right next to a site thumbnail (a thumb of what was on the domain before I bought it), alexa rank, domain age, IP, backlinks, and directory listings.
If you check the domain using Dig Pagerank, all like 50 datacenters show a pagerank of 4. However, the number 4 is colored Red, not Green. This indicates fake PR.
Like I said above.. I don’t know how a domain can get fake PR. I don’t know what fake PR means or how you get rid of it. But the moral of this story is to check domains before you buy/sell them to make sure they’re legit. I looked like an ass yesterday. I don’t want you to do the same.
Wow, that’s interesting. I had heard of people doing this before but never learned how to do it or detect it. Thanks for the links… I’ll definately be using them.
Interesting, I have never even heard of a fake PR.
I always check for fake PR before buying sites/domain names…
they do it with a 301/2 redirect i read somewhere.
just always check!
I see some great new ad slogan something along the lines of “Friends don’t let friends buy sites with fake PR.”
The same exact thing happened to me! I bought a pr 5 domain for $150, and come to find out it was fake. I’ve still got it, and i’m not sure what i should do with it. I put it up for sale for $20 saying it was fake, and yet i didn’t get one offer!
I’ll say this is a new one on me as well. I don’t pay that much aattention to PR, so I guess I’m out of the loop on it. Thanks for the info though.
OK, did some checking. Looks like they are considering fake PR to be a domain which has redirects from somewhere else. Admittedly a few of mine came back fake, but I have no idea where the redirects are from other than some internal which are necessary.
I can see how people could pump and dump on PR for sites they put up for sale, but that’s why you shouldn’t make any buy / sell decisions based on something as capricious as PR.
Sounds like a bit of hysteria honestly. People sounding the alarm bell over what they are calling fake PR. Doesn’t count for much in my book unless you can see people are deliberately pumping up domains, but people should be checking backlinks when they buy anyway.
OK just found another description of fake PR. This one claims that Googlebot get redirected to high PR domain and the referring page gets listed with the high PR.
http://www.monetizers.com/fake-pr.php
To me this sounds a bit dubious and if so, I have no idea how some of my sites are showing fake PR since I have no external redirects.
Hmmm… anyway sorry to dominate the comments David. Just me thinking out loud.
I bought a domain with fake PR, it was one of the first domains I bought off someone and never thought to make sure it wasn’t fake… was lucky it was for really cheap or I would have been pretty pissed.
lol not your fault could have happened to anyone!
I came upon a domain with a fake pr as well. Some pr6 domain I registered a while back =\
[...] Avoid looking like an idiot: Please verify Page Rank David made the mistake. So why should you? I have never had a domain with fake Page Rank, at least what I know of but the chance to get one when you buy an sell domains are quite big. So make sure to always check your domains before you buy or sell them. [...]
That’s a new one to me also. Before now I’ve never heard of a site getting a fake PageRank. I’m glad I did hear about it, so I can check it if I ever purchase a site.
I think I got hit like this. I bought a PR4 domain and a couple of weeks later it was a 0!
[...] Given CashQuests claim is not true, issues of Fake Page Rank have affected one blogger. I didn’t know that Page Rank could be faked, but it can. [...]
[...] Avoid Looking Like an Idiot: Please Verify Pagerank [...]