SEO Junkie

Detecting a fake PR is fairly simple. If you think that a particular site is showing a fake PR, then simply take a look at its cache version on Google.

For example, http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com/pagerank-5.php is showing a PR6 and you want to confirm whether they are showing a fake PR or not.

To do so, you go to Google and run the cache: command as follows:

cache:http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com/pagerank-5.php

OR

http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache%3Awww.pr10.darkseoteam.com/pagerank-5.php

Either way, you will see the cache of http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/. That means that the site in question is most probably faking its PR6.

In addition, they are either doing a 301 / 302 redirect to http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ directly or using cloaking.

To find out whether it is doing a 301 / 302 redirect, you have to look at its HTTP Header. Go to http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php and type in http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com/pagerank-5.php and press Submit button. You will see the following:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK =>
Date => Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:01:35 GMT
Server => Apache/1.3.33 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a AuthMySQL/4.3.9-2
X-Powered-By => PHP/4.4.1RC2-dev
Vary => Host
Connection => close
Content-Type => text/html

It shows that the site is NOT doing a 301 / 302 redirect since the HTTP Status code it is returning is 200 OK. So, it is doing the redirect via Cloaking. It is only redirecting the GoogleBot to http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ with either a 301 or 302 Status code on the basis of its IP address or User Agent field.

It is an indicator that http://www.pr10.darkseoteam.com/pagerank-5.php is faking a PR6.

RustyBrick points out a Cre8asite thread titled Will SERPS be pointless in the future? where the people look at the future of search.

Taken from the thread:

It may have been said before, but I can’t help but wonder if the SERP concept will become less relevant or a thing of the past.

Google Desktop, Google Notebook, Google Gadgets & Google Accounts will all gather end user specific information, habits and preferences. Google will most definitely use this information to target ads, but they might also use it to target more relevant search results. If so, your SERP’s will not be my SERPS and my SERPS will probably be way off the norm for any websites that I do SEO for. Google will know my habits and they will be heavily skewed in towards websites that I manage.

RustyBrick continues:

Let’s take a look at Google specifically, and limit it to those four new products. Google Trends, ok that doesn’t tell us that much, but it does show Google keeps data over time and breaks it down by demographic criteria (we all knew this). Google Gadgets with Google Desktop, well duh, they are on your desktop, serving you real time information on what you are interested in. Google Notebook, well we don’t know that much about it yet, but it will supposedly allow friends to share content and notes - um, again, content, private, details about registered users. Finally we have Google Coop where I can change the SERPs that you, yes you, see on your Google results page, simply if you subscribe. Now that is in your face.

I think the change would be better for all those SEOs who do SEO with an eye on the user instead of the search engines.