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Buying High PR Domains: Is It Wise? March 21, 2010

Posted by admin in : Domain Names , comments closed

As many people have found out, you can buy domains with high pagerank (PR) such as PR4 or higher on auctions such as eBay.

Why would anyone pay a significant amount of money for just a domain that doesn’t even come with a business, website or hosting?

Well, the primary reason is so that people can take this high PR domain and use it to host a website primarily for the purpose of linking to websites with lower PR or no PR. Since search engine spiders visit high PR sites more often than low PR sites, the idea is that the spiders will visit the high PR site and then follow the links to lower PR sites.

This strategy may enable the lower PR sites to become indexed faster by the search engines, and with enough links from higher PR sites, the PR of the linked sites could increase.

While this may sound like an excellent idea, there are a few things to watch for in purchasing high PR domains:

1. Unscrupulous sellers have been known to fake PR. Without going into how this can be done, you should use free online tools such as http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html and http://reladvance.com/metrix/find_metrics_results.php to independently verify the PR of the domain you are thinking of buying. Also, you should install the Google toolbar http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/ on your computer so you can always see the PR of sites you visit.

2. The PR may not last past the next time Google computes PR. Sellers never guarantee the PR will last any length of time, and for good reason. How Google exactly computes PR is mystery and changes frequently. A PR5 domain could be a PR0 domain the next time Google runs their PR algorithms, and oops — there goes your investment.

3. If you do find a legitimate domain with high PR that lasts, a backlink from that domain website to a lower PR website may not be all that effective. Search engines look at “relevancy” of the backlinks, and if the high PR domain is about “cameras,” then it will be able to provide relevant links only to sites about cameras.

4. One backlink from a high PR site is like a drop in the ocean. It takes many backlinks to get and maintain a high PR and consistently high indexing over time. Buying a lot of high PR domains to get a good ranking and indexing could end up being a very expensive proposition.

So look before you leap when considering the purchase of a high PR domain. There are so many other less expensive ways to attain indexing and PR that you may want to consider before laying out money for a domain whose PR may in the end do you little good.

Pitfalls to Watch For When Purchasing High PR Domains February 12, 2010

Posted by admin in : Domain Names , comments closed

You may have seen on eBay and other auctions high pagerank (PR) domains for sale. You may have even considered purchasing one of these domains. How do you ascertain the value of such a domain?

First of all, you must verify the PR by using a free tool such as http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html. You just enter the domain name that you are thinking of purchasing. This site will tell you whether or not the domain actually has the PR that the seller claims.

Then, even if the site has a high PR, it still may NOT be indexed by Google, and if a site is not indexed, that’s sort of like a word not being in the dictionary. Google may think it’s a great word based on the PR, but if they don’t index it, it won’t be found in Google’s “dictionary.”

It may seem inconceivable that Google will give PR to a site they don’t index, but I’ve seen it happen many times. Google explains it’s because the algorithms that index sites are constantly updating, but the algorithms that calculate PR update less frequently, and sometimes the two processes are not in synch.

Be that as it may, I’ve seen high PR domains for sale that are NOT indexed in Google. What you can do to find out whether the domain is indexed in Google is to type site:www.nameofthedomain.com into the search bar. If Google comes back with a page that says, “Your search – site:www.nameofthedomain.com – did not match any documents” — well, the site is not indexed in Google.

You can try the same thing in Yahoo and MSN and see if any pages are indexed in those search engines. If the domain is well-indexed in Yahoo and MSN, and getting a lot of traffic, it may not matter if the domain is not indexed by Google.

However, another important factor in purchasing a domain is how many backlinks, or links from other sites, the domain has. You can type link:www.nameofthedomain.com into Google, and it will tell you which sites are linking to the domain. Once again, I’ve seen sites with high PR that only had one or even no backlinks!

If you are considering purchasing a domain with a high PR that is not well indexed or doesn’t have many backlinks, you’ve got to stop and think for a minute. Google has made it well known that it considers relevant backlinks, among many other criteria, in assessing PR. Now if the domain has no or few backlinks, how long do you think it will keep its PR?

So when considering the purchase of a high PR domain, be sure to perform your due diligence. Two other free tools that will help you are http://reladvance.com/metrix/find_metrics_results.php and http://www.linkpopularity.com. Always check out every aspect of the domain — PR, indexing, and backlinks — using several independent tools. None of the tools are 100% accurate at any given moment, and so it’s to your advantage to use them all and compare results.