The Buying and Selling PageRank Scam

[hijaker]

There's a scam out there, and I'll be the first to tell you that it's really a scam against website owners--and a lot of innocent webmasters (just like you and me) are falling victim to it. I'm hoping that by posting and exposing this scam that you will be more educated as a webmaster and as a consumer.

I've labeled this scam the "Buying and Selling Stolen Pagerank Scam". Here's how the "Buying and Selling Stolen PageRank Scam" works and what these scummy people are doing:

The fraudster buys a domain name and sets up a website Directory. But, before they make the directory available for public view, they steal the PageRank of an innocent website. They do this by redirecting their directory's domain name to the innocent website that has a high Pagerank. By doing a redirect to, for example, a website that has a PR8, Google thinks (rightly so) that the Directory's domain name has a PR8. Once Google has assigned the backlinks and the PR to the redirected Directory domain, the Directory domain owner 'turns on' the Directory--and it appears to have a PageRank of 8.

Redirecting a domain name is not the problem. The problem is when the Directory owner attempts to scam innocent webmasters into thinking that they are getting a link from a PageRank 8 website (whereas the PR has been stolen from another website). In many cases, the Directory owner is selling links from their website on the premise that it's a link from a PR8 site. The next month, the Directory will most likely not have a high PageRank. Therefore, the innocent webmaster who thinks they have bought a link from a high PageRank website has been scammed.

What's an innocent webmaster to do? There are tell-tale signs that a directory or website that you're going to get a link from has stolen PageRank from another website.

First, check the backlinks of the Directory or website that's going to link to you. If you cannot find links that are suppposed to be linking to the Directory, then become suspicious. Look some more at random, and you might see a pattern. It's very easy to expose sites' backlinks like this if you use a tool like Optilink that will analyze backlinks for you. In Optilink specifically, if the "target links =0" on the majority of these backlinks, then be suspicious.

Second, if the backlinks of the Directory or website that's going to link to you has a huge number of backlinks (thousands or hundreds of thousands) and you've never heard of this directory or website, then be suspicious. Check more backlinks and see if there's a pattern.

Third, if you've never heard of the directory or website that's going to link to you and it has links from extremely well-known websites, is there a reason why you've never heard of it?

Fourth, if you receive an unsolicited email that states that you can purchase or get a reciprocal link from a high-PR website, then be suspicious. Most real high-PR websites or directories (like DMOZ, Yahoo!, or niche directories) won't send you an email. In fact, in most cases, you have to beg, plead to, and offer your first-born son just to get into their directory. They won't be contacting you by email. If you get such an email, check the backlinks out thoroughly like I suggest in the first three tips.

Lastly, if you see advertisements that state that you can purchase or get a recprical link from a high-PR website and it sounds intriguing, check the backlinks thoroughly like I suggest in the first three tips here.

Buying and selling stolen PageRank is definitely a scam, and those doing it are feeding off of innocent webmasters. In fact, as a consumer who almost got suckered in, it really should be illegal for them to do this--it's downright fraudulent.