What is Fake PR and how can we detect it

Many webmasters receive emails daily for link exchanges, ad sales or simple advertising inquires. The problem is that not everyone plays fair and some people deceive the Google PR toolbar in showing a Fake PR for a given page. That page is presented as a high PR page it can foul us in buying links or ad space on it. I do not rely on PR in advertising but some people do and here is how we find out if a page has a Fake PR.

The Fake PR is achieved rather simple, it’s a combination of a 301 redirect with cloaking to a higher PR page. Google assigns the PR to that page also, thinking that the pages are identical. Keep in mind that Google hates cloaking so think twice before doing this type of redirect ,this method won’t increase the ranking of your page in any way, but the opposite.

Method 1

On google.com, simply write info:domain.com (domain.com being the fake pr domain). If Google shows no results or if the result is another page that domain.com, the PR is Fake!

Method 2

You can use an online tool to check if a domain has a fake PR. I recommend the DigPageRank Tool , it’s very easy to use and it scans a range of Google DataCenters for an actual PR export. Simply enter the domain and this tool will start showing results on different DCs. If the PR shown by this tool is green, it means that the PR is good and valid, if the PR is red, it’s FAKE.

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