Page rank is an approximate value which Google assigns a particular web page (note not website) as a reflection of the authority which that page commands. While it’s not definite, a page with a higher page rank will outrank a similar site in the SERPs for the same keywords. Let’s talk about what is fake page rank.

What is Fake Page Rank

Page rank is achieved and improved primarily through links from other pages and sites pointing to that page because as they pass on their influence to that page, that page’s own authority and potential influence improves, as well. Your page rank likely won’t ever be higher than your higher PR link pointing to your site. You can learn how to find your page rank and more about it through my article on it.

The unfortunate bit is that page rank, like most everything else related to SEO, can be gamed and faked. The process is fairly simple. You set your low PR site to 301 redirect (permanent redirect) to a site which actually has a high PR.

The Google bot crawls your site and discovers the redirect and when the script is written, the site inherits the other site’s higher page rank so long as you don’t remove the redirect, so some cloaking is used to make the Google bot think you’re still doing a 301 redirect while offering a surfable page to anyone coming to it, but Google doesn’t think the page is even in its directory.

Why would you want to game your page rank?

First so that other webmasters will take you more seriously. When they see that you apparently have a page rank of 7, they’ll listen to what you have to say about SEO or whatever it is you’re talking about. They’ll hound you for a link to their site and you’ll probably find obtaining links to be a bit easier, as well, if it looks like you apparently already have a good number of powerful links to get that high PR.

Second, it drastically boosts your site’s value. You can get more out of advertisers if they think you have a high PR site, and perhaps most typically if you decide to sell your site then you’ll get A LOT more money for it if it has a high page rank. Fake page rank is generally pretty well known amongst SEOers nowadays and those are typically the ones set to buy your site and who care about PR in the first place, so it’s not nearly as effective for scamming people as it once was.

Next week I’ll talk about how to spot fake page rank.