A few weeks ago, I purchased a domain name on auction that had a pr 6 with +40k quality backlinks on it. When I checked a few days ago, ALL the pr was GONE as well as the backlinks.  This also happened with the one other domain I purchased on auction.  The one I already mentioned had a PR 6 and the other one had a PR 4.


I was a member of one of the new domain service websites where you first learn about how to buy and sell domains and another where there is a $97 monthly fee where you can organize the work done with many domains.  With that service, you can overview everything you need to know about domains that you might want to buy, and even those you already own, including the price you bought it for and how much you're making on the domain name (say you decided to park the domain). 

When I was about to build a site for the domain name, I noticed that the PR was GONE and so were ALL of the backlinks!  I quickly put up a site with Adsense on it with simple site-building software - not sure if this would help but it felt better to do something.  I checked again and it was really gone.  I wondered how this could happen and discovered that many domains sold on auction lately have had their PageRank "spoofed" or "faked".

A great measure of the backlinks would have been Yahoo and MSN, who have current link counts, whereas Google is behind a few months. When I changed host providers, that reset the toolbar since the "spoof" redirect was no longer valid.  I changed the DNS so that I could build a website. My initial plans were to build a website in concordance with the traffic coming to the domain.  If this happens when the DNS changes, why didn't the membership site I was a member of  and where I learned about the buying and selling of domain names  warn about that in the information?

This is not to lay the blame on anyone; but if you are teaching how to invest in domain names, this seems like an important part of the curriculum.  On the other hand, seo experts say that process of  page rank and linking spoofing is relatively new, and not everyone knows about it.  It certainly won't sell expired domain names if it's talked about too much.

What I now understand is that  if the PageRank was real, I would have had to pay a lot more for them than I did, so I am grateful it was a very small amount, compared to what I could have paid for them (had I been able to afford it!).

So how can you tell if the page rank and back links are "spoofed"?  Get some good advice from an seo expert - they know how to check this.  I am not at liberty to publish the information I received.

Also, making money by buying an expired domain with backlinks and traffic and then parking it with a parking service which will share the revenue with you will eventually disappear when the search engines find out the site has no real content but only ads. It will then be de-indexed.

The search engines are getting better at dropping links on expired domains and de-indexing them, so you have to be quick.  It is rare to find a domain name with lots of backlinks but even a few will help you get indexed quickly and get page rank, and as I understand it I could have redirected the pages to a new website to get the traffic.

It seems to me that the best bet in making money with expired domains would be to flip the domain right away.  Unless you are really good at SEO and creating and redirecting pages and whatnaught, this seems the easiest thing to do.  Maybe I should have created a site right away - but that wouldn't have given me any money in the long run.

People who have purchased a number of high PR expired domains have been careful to purchase them with keywords emphasized in the title; that is what is almost always recommended. But it is hard see if the traffic goes with this.

I have no intention of asking for a refund for the domain names.  But, the truth be told - I would never have purchased the domains in the first place had I not believed there was already traffic associated with the domains, the only true reason for buying a domain at a higher price (for me).

I am writing about this here because I don't think that people generally know that PR and backlinks can be spoofed like that.  If the page rank and backlinks were real, the domain name in question would have been worth at least a five figure amount, according to calculations shown to me. It would have been worth at least three times the amount of daily traffic translated into dollars.

There is an incredible amount of money in the buying and selling of domains with traffic. Just, buyer, beware, know your metrics, test the PR and backlinks before buying, and you won't lose any money.


Angela Wickenberg