I have just set up a redirect from four key pages on an old domain to the same four pages on my new domain. Bizarrely enough, the google toolbar is still showing the old Page Ranks AFTER the page has redirected. But, if I actually type in the URL of the new page, the toolbar still shows zero. Surely this is open to exploitation ...
Page rank can be faked easily and the pagerank you see in your toolbar is not always correct. I expect that the toolbar can detect the 301 redirect headers and knows that any PR the old url will have is credited to the new url automatically when a spider next visits so it applies the PR itself. There is a site somewhere that has 1 page called PR5.html and one page PR6.html etc and all of the 10 pages show a toolbar PR corresponding to their filename! Pretty cool. If anyone can remember the site please post the link.......
Thanks for reply mad4. I added the .301s in the hope of seeing the toolbar update during the coming weeks or months .. I certainly did not expect an instant update. That said, anyone accessing the site directly on the new domain will see the PR0 pages ... so I still need to wait for the official PR update. Grrrr.