I have seen domain names that have PR1,2,3 but are now unregistered and so can be bought again. However would my new index page for the domain automatically have this PR? Only to take one example that gets in the top 10: www.discountdomainsuk.com - this is PR5. So is the index page http://www.discountdomainsuk.com/index.php However when you look at some of the domains with existing PR that are unregistered the index pages seem to all have PR0, despite the domain www.xyz.com having PR1,2,3... So is it a waste of money buying these domains or is this a canonical issue? Would the home page of www.xyz.com get the PR?
It's an expired domain,right? What if the previous owner used black seo on that domain? I would never buy expired domains.
I sure would and do. Good names are good names. The PR you see is of little value other than telling you that the site is not banned. What matters is incoming traffic and how you convert it. If an existing domain has Pagerank this is an indiction that there are existing incoming links. Search to see if you can find those links. If they look like they can generate traffic then it might be worth your while. I say "might" because unless you are going to hold and resell, the domain needs to be something worth developing. You have to have a plan for any domain you buy.
Depends on the name, check the links. I have taken expired names with decent PR and just threw up similar content as the original and instantly they rank for their old terms because of all old links. One name, after about 2 years that used to be a directory, i turned it back into one (it was forwarding traffic before) and instantly ranks in top 1-2 on google for it's original terms. I know it's anecdotal, but if you have the right domain for what you're looking for, it can be great, im not sure if PR will help if you're optimizing a completely seperate keyword/market.
Its PR will revert to 0, however, if you don't do something relevant & constructive with it. Use it or lose it.