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Mojo -> Website sales scam using Page Rank (5/3/2005 11:19:34)
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I was recently reminded of a scam that dishonest site owners may try to use when selling a site.
Let's imagine you see the following site for sale:
widget.com
PR6
20,000 Google backlinks
family emergency - first $1500 takes it.
What a deal eh? So, you quickly check the PR of the site and verify that yes, it has a PR6. You check backlinks and again, all looks well with over 20k. You look over the site and find it has hundreds of pages and all seems to be in order. You had better act fast because at fire sale prices that site is going to sell *fast*.
What do you do? Unfortunately, many people would make the offer and start the escrow process.
What should you do?
- Verify the backlinks are actually pointing at widget.com
- Check the cache on Google and Yahoo - really look closely
If the seller is running a scam the following could happen -
He quickly builds the site, finds some backlinks and immediately redirects the site to a similar looking site with a PR6. After a few PR updates the domain widget.com will be known by Google as belonging to the PR6 site and can inherit this PR. This original site still has their PR, but the redirected domain now wears the *look* of a PR6.
After this PR update, the seller then stops the redirect, activates his original site and - bam! He now looks like he is the owner of a PR6 site. This domain will lose the look of the PR6 eventually, but if he can sell it first he is the winner.
By looking a the backlink pages in the first place you would have noticed that there were no links to the widget.com domain. These backlinks would all be pointing to the real PR6 site. Remember, widget.com is sharing the look of the real site, so checking backlinks will list 20,000, but they point to the other site.
Look at the cache of the site. Sometimes, a quick glance will miss that the cache is *not* the same site. In the redirected case above, widget.com will show the cache of the true PR6 site. So, if you pay attention, you should notice they are different.
If you find a problem with either the cache or the backlinks don't buy the site. This kind of scam will often go unnoticed if the seller is using eBay (where there are not as many tech savvy people hanging out) and only sells the site for $250 to $500 with a PR5. By the time the PR falls off the site the seller can simply say, "you must have done something to get a penalty". Yada, yada, yada...
There are many scams and dangers out there. The recent Googlebowling problem has got me to thinking...
Forewarned.
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