Please Be Careful of Buying Higher PR Links on Dropped Domains - Dont' Get Ripped Off

The new biggest fad of scammers and fraud artists is to buy a dropped domain that is still showing a high page rank in the toolbar (because this only gets updated once every 3 or 4 months) and then duping unsuspecting folks into buying links.

The reason these domains lose their page rank is because the backlinks that the old sites aquired are no longer relevant and will disappear over the next couple of toolbar updates, thereby decreasing it's page rank by one, two or more points.

Don't get ripped off, a good way to check if I site has been dropped or re-birthed is to go to Way Back Machine and take a look at what the site content was a few months ago, if it is completly different then you are likely getting ripped off.

There are a few (very few) DP members that will place a new site on a dropped domain and still build links and promote it but usually those will be upfront and honest about the current status of the domain.

When these cheaters try and rip you off don't forget to tell your friends and fellow DP members so you can save them the trouble. Red rep also helps weed out those dishonest members.

 

I'm one of those webmasters who does promote a site to build backlinks to a domain, regardless if it has PR or not. My thread does say that the blog has been wiped and started again, not a dropped domain.

I see these dropped domains all the time. The quickest indicator is that the domain name appears random or doesn't match the blog subject.

I also use checkpagerank.net to look at the backlinks (not the page rank). If there are only 100 links for a PR4+ domain, there's no way the number of backlinks can support that page rank, and its likely to be dropped. I use a firefox search extension that I wrote and now share for free to check this quickly:

http://www.jagoharry.co.uk/downloads/firefox-2-and-ie7-search-engine-add-ons/

 

oh that is really great tool and this is very helpful information thanks
rep. added

 

I got scammed at DP for a PR 6 sites (banned from google) recently,I learnt the lesson in a hard way.

 

JagoHarry, yes you and a couple of others are straight-up when selling on these domains and your rep and iTrader reflect that. Unfortuanately for every Jago there are 20 scammers just trying to milk link buyers.

sorry to hear that it_career, it probably happens atleast 10 times a day to others. Don't forget to leave negative iTrader and red rep to those people.

Also, checking backlinks can help but sometimes newer sites (offering great deals) have a low number of backlinks. But for sure an established PR5 or higher site should have collected a nice number of links. The point is that no 'one' check can tell the whole story. So take 5 minutes and look at a couple of different tools. Checking backlinks, way back machine, page rank, then the link sellers reputation and itrader will give you a good chance at success.

 

Definitely. Exactly, there's no silver bullet! Maybe its worth writing a new thread that can be made sticky in this forum? A check list of things to check really helps.

 

I think a sticky would be great on this topic because I am sure a lot of new DP'ers gets scammed and then soured to the forums and don't ever bother coming back.

 

it happens a lot more then one should expect - and therefore, the buyer should always do a thorough check before sending the payment

 

Yes it probably does happen a lot more than we realize. It is easy to say folks should check but many of the newer members probably don't know about many of the scams going on and lately I have noticed members with lots of green rep and iTrader deceptively selling links on dropped domains, so most new members probably think because of the high reputation they can trust them.

 

Buyers don't always know how to do the checks, so helping them is a good start. Perhaps some examples too.

e.g. a PR6 domain called naturesconference2006.org with 100 backlinks is not a good candidate.

 

Domain age is also a good indication whether the domain is dropped.

Alot of people try to say that it does not matter if the domain drops, as long as the backlinks remain in place (implying in the process that if the backlinks are there, the PR will remain).

But, there is also a lot of people that testify that it does matter.

So, I think people should view dropped domains as a risk, even if they come back with good backlinks. Not saying they are worthless when they have good backlinks, just that it is a bit of a risk. (Or ALOT of a risk)

CheckPageRank.net shows the age of the domain. If it is younger than the last tool-bar PR export (which was at the end of april) and is currently showing PR, then it is a dropped domain.

 

the important thing here is - keep the itrader and forums rep on one side when doing a deal (have a glance at them for a start) but do a deal with an old-timer as well as a new seller in the same way as you would have done in the case there was no itrader or reputation to be seen

and of course, the best way would be to not buy the links based on PR

 

I don't think the age of the domain is relevant. Just cause it was a parked page for 8 years does not matter if the relevant links that gave it page rank disappear.

When links are no longer relevant to the website they will be dropped and with it will go the page rank.

Really I don't have a problem with dropped domains as long as the link seller reveals this important information to the potential buyers. What makes me angry is that lately I have been wasting lots of time PM'ing folks that are offering links only to find that they are on dropped domains. If they mentioned that upfront I would not be wasting my time. But most importantly many newer forums members are getting bilked because lying by omission is still lying.

It is pretty obvious that 95% of the folks selling links on dropped domains are scammers because why would you choose a name like http://www.natureexhibit.com/ for a general directory (in this case this directory was sold as an established PR5 directory by a member of this forum and now it is down to a PR4 and it could drop even lower).

 

I agree that people should be open and honest about the state of the domain they are selling links on but I am of the opinion that good backlinks will normally maintain a domains PR so I would and do buy links on dropped domains if the price is right.

I even sell links on a couple of dropped domains and i price the links appropriately when doing so.

I don't see links on a dropped domain as a bad thing myself, but buyers should be aware of the risk involved so yeah this thread should be stickied.

 

Any proof of this? I would genuinely be interested to see this if only to save myself some money when i buy links on dropped domanis.

 

Definitely. Although it helps to consider all evidence really, particularly negative iTrader.

PR can be a good measure of a webmasters work to promote their site if the PR is genuine.

 

pedigreechump6 I guess it is mostly common sense, if you owned a site and the topic was nature and you linked to www.natureexhibit.com because it had good information for your visitors then the sites became a general web directory or a blog selling posts or whatever, chances are 99.9% you would remove the link? I also think the search engines start removing backlinks when the content on the pages is no longer relevant, it might need a manual review I am not sure. Some folks say that when google detects a dropped domain it resets the PR to 0 but I have not seen proof of that.

 

I've heard that a fair bit too, but I've only seen it on blogs with dropped domains when they didn't build up their backlinks to match the PR. If there are enough backlinks, it was fine, if there wasn't, it dropped to a PR0.

Not exactly perfect evidence, but worth noting.

 

i dont know about this domain but if a pr6 has 50 backlinks and few of them are pr6 and/or pr7, and other backlinks are pr3, pr4 and pr5 then it is definitely good domain, not every pr6 has more than hundred backlinks.
some time they have natural 10 backlinks from pr7 and lower and they get pr6.

there is no such thing, website can never be relevant or irrelevant, the keywords may be.
you say if my website is on electronics but i get pr5 link from music website that will not effect my pr? thats what you say, and that is wrong.

 

Possible... but if high PR sites are linking to another site, then its likely that there are many other low PR sites linking to the same site.... this assumes that any site worth linking to from a high PR site is a site people want to link to on low PR sites. Resulting in hundreds or thousands of backlinks.