Okay I know that a lot of people buy nice domains, build an “okay” site on it and then sell them. They don’t just sell them right away, of course. They get a nice PR first because the buyers want to rank high (or maybe buy the domain and then sell it for more). Well things like these are always going on.

But, the important thing is you need to watch out for fake PRs. No, I am not joking. You can put a fake PR on a domain. And I’m sure that there’s a lot of people doing it right now. So, how do you figure out which PR is fake and which one’s are real? Well just follow these four simple steps:

1. Find the domain you want
2. Go check out the site on that domain
3. Google this “site:www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com” and you should find caches of that site
4. Go check the cache. See anything fishy? Is it the cache for the site on that domain? Or a cache from a different site?

If you answered yes to step #4 then its a fake PR. To fake a PR, you basically redirect the Googlebot to a site with a high PR and it gets tricked. And you get the PR of that site. I’m not going to tell you how to do it of course, but you get the idea.

So, next time you buy a domain from someone remember to do this. Good luck! Oh and don’t forget to share your experiences with us. Like if you ever bought a domain with a fake PR (or maybe sold one?).

Oh look. I was right! Matt Cutts, head of Google spam team posted on his blog confirming this. Man my spidey sense are awesome. Just amazing, huh?

So tell us if you care about PR or not. I personally don’t. Like I do a bit, but I don’t go crazy about it (like all the people over at DP and a lot of other webmasters). I would be happy to have a high PR, but I wouldn’t do all the crazy link exchanges, backlinks, etc to get it. I would rather concentrate on writing great content for my blog.

Wanna check your PR? Head over to Smart PageRank or PRchecker.info. Or you can also check it from your Google Toolbar (but I wouldn’t install the Google toolbar).

Update: PR has been updated.