Publishing System Settings Logout Login Register
What is Fake PageRank (PR), and how do I avoid being fooled?
TutorialCommentsThe AuthorReport Tutorial
Tutorial Avatar
Rating
Add to Favorites
Posted on August 13th, 2007
5987 views
General Website Development

Fake page rank is a common SEO trick you should be aware of when doing a number of things from buying an attractive domain to buying page links or adverts.

Domains with a fake PR are often banned from being indexed by google but more immediately important is that many sellers will advertise the domain as PR7 for example to raise the price you pay for it. So that begs the question - How do you make sure you are not caught out?








So, how is a fake PR achieved? Well to start I'll sake this section is not intended to encourage or educate you in a way that encourages you to use it - instead I found that knowing how PR is faked myself, helped me better protect myself from being scammed.

PR is faked, simply, when a site uses a 301 redirection to redirect their domain to a higher ranked website. For example if I wanted to fake a domains PR I could use the redirect to point www.example.com to www.pixel2life.com.

301 redirect is search engine talk for "moved permenantly". When a search engine reads this, it considers page has moved permanently and that the redirect will stay

By now you're probably thinking that it would be obvious if they did this - because you would see it right? Well, not if they've got half a brain (of course a full brain would mean they wouldn't be doing this in the first place) - a simple code, that can be produced in virtually all development languages, can enable this redirect to be applied when only the google bot makes a visit, and not  a normal visitor such as yourself.





The first thing most people will do when looking at a domain with a PR is to use one of the many sites found by using a simple google search, this, is where you have to be careful. Only a hand full of these sites will check if the PR is valid instead of taking it at face value.

For checking the true pagerank of a domain i suggest one of the following websites:

http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html
http://www.rankalert.net/fake-pagerank.php

There are more, and a simple google search will find these for you, however these are the two I use and know to work well.

Alternatively, you can take the manual approach and simply type the URL into google. You will notice the first result will be the domain you searched for, but the domain it is redirecting the google bot to. I do not suggest this for conclusive proof, but again it's something that may come in handy.


To end I will mention one thing, most sites use the 301 redirect innocently. For example the latter of the two websites I have mentioned above will report "google.com" as having an invalid pagerank - this is obviously wrong. The reason behind this is that Google uses a 301 redirect from google.com to www.google.com

[MY_P2L_AD]

Some sites, such as 'SEO logs' have taken this into consideration and will report the domain as having a valid pagerank, however make sure you check this before boycotting a domain or making accusations.
Dig this tutorial?
Thank the author by sending him a few P2L credits!

Send
Matthew.

This author is too busy writing tutorials instead of writing a personal profile!
View Full Profile Add as Friend Send PM
Pixel2Life Home Advanced Search Search Tutorial Index Publish Tutorials Community Forums Web Hosting P2L On Facebook P2L On Twitter P2L Feeds Tutorial Index Publish Tutorials Community Forums Web Hosting P2L On Facebook P2L On Twitter P2L Feeds Pixel2life Homepage Submit a Tutorial Publish a Tutorial Join our Forums P2L Marketplace Advertise on P2L P2L Website Hosting Help and FAQ Topsites Link Exchange P2L RSS Feeds P2L Sitemap Contact Us Privacy Statement Legal P2L Facebook Fanpage Follow us on Twitter P2L Studios Portal P2L Website Hosting Back to Top