This is a question I get asked all the time. Advertisers what to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on text links located on high PR pages, so they ask me how they can tell if the PageRank is real. The answer is simple, all toolbar pagerank is fake.

Why would the toolbar pagerank be fake? Since SEOs and webmasters are pretty much the only people that install the toolbar, it really is of no benefit to show real pagerank. Doing so would show the people google wants to stop most where the best pages to get links are located.

On the other hand, showing a fake pagerank has several benefits:

1. Link Buyers and sellers use pagerank as a valuation tool, so throwing out a red herring keeps the link market in disarray. For some reason, link buyers are convinced that low PR or no PR links are no good and will pay little if anything for these links, at the same time, sellers don’t see the value in selling at a low price, resulting in fewer links being sold.
2. Google can churn the fake pagerank, causing webmasters to dump outstanding aged links to buy new links with the same PR for their site.
3. The pagerank toolbar is the greatest piece of spyware ever invented. Think about it, the people Google wants watch the closest, are the ones that are voluntarily installing this chunk of spyware called the “Google Toolbar” so they can see that little green PageRank bar. It offers google a very convenient to track link buyers as they click on all their paid link pages to check their fake pagerank.
4. Google can drop or display a PR ZERO on a real high PR site that is selling links causing all their link buyers to abandon ship needlessly.

So when buying links, don’t look at pagerank, buy links in the content of relevant webpages where your anchor text actually fits. The smart buyer that knows pagerank is fake can buy tons of great links at great prices, while their pagerank obsessed competitors overspend on high pagerank links.

So where do you find the real pagerank of a webpage? To get that, all you need is a key to Google’s backdoor and combination to the secret pagerank vault. Not going to happen.

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