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phanio
07-28-2009, 10:17 PM
I was just in one of my networking groups and came across a request to send referrals to a company. Now, I normally don't do this unless I know the company to be legitimate.

So, I went to their profile and clicked a link to their website - and I was shocked. Their Google page rank was 10/10. Now, I have never seen this outside of google's own pages. I then clicked on their "home" link. The exact same page (content, format, etc) came up - but this time the page rank was 0/10. I looked at the url and saw that this one (from the home link) was www.theirbusiness.com/index.html - the original page I went to from the link on the group page was just simply www.theirbusiness.com.

Again, shocked. I then went back to the first page and checked their back links. This is a US based company. However, all 777 backlinks were from edu sits in Austrialia. I cllicked on a few of the first page backlinks and could find no reference to this company.

Is there something this company is doing that is not right? I want to send them some referrals - but if they are bogus or scamming the system, I don't want to send them any customers. I believe in capitalism - but I also think capitalism should be above board.

nealrm
07-28-2009, 11:53 PM
How did you check thier page rank? Is it possible that they somehow managed to direct you to a false page rank?

vangogh
07-29-2009, 01:03 AM
Joseph if you want to send me a link to the site via PM, I'll be happy to take a look.

Unless the site is one everyone here knows then I doubt they really have a PR of 10. Yahoo and Microsoft are both PR9. Still it's possible. PR is really a measure of the PR flowing into your site. If high PR sites are linking to yours then your PR will also be very high.

The edu sites would only pass a lot of PageRank if they happen to have a lot as well. If all 777 of those edu links are from PR10 sites then maybe the site in question would also have a PR10. Sounds very fishy though. It's not really natural to only have links from edu sites.

With the two pages:

domain.com
domain.com/index.php

those are technically two different pages in the eyes of Google. They may point to the same place, but a different URL means a different page. It's not uncommon to see different PRs on the two pages. In this case it would mean all links are pointing to the index.php version of the page which again is unnatural. Ideally one of those URLs should redirect to the other so you'd only see one regardless of which you typed.

My gut says something isn't right here, but again if you want to send a link I'll be happy to take a look for you.

phanio
07-29-2009, 05:50 PM
This is so funny. Where I found the site was on LinkedIn. When I go to the profile page and click the link under "website" - I get directed to their website and it comes up 10/10. However, if I type the same URL in the address bar - it comes up with 0/10. Strange. The link to their profile page is: View Profile Sign In (http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=48865159&authToken=EzV4&authType=name&goback=%2Emml_inbox_none_DATE_1%2Emid_1330259664) - not sure if you have to be signed in. The person's business is called Griffin Credit.

I PM'ed this person and the response I received was: "Must be lucky cause thats the first I have heard about a google page rank."

All I know is that I will not refer anyone here.

Hope I am not opening myself to some problems by putting that link here. I mean no harm - just trying to see if I want to work with this company.

vangogh
07-29-2009, 11:58 PM
I think I know what might have happened. Sometimes the tools that measure PR get stuck, usually more often when moving from a hight PR page to a low PR page. Your tool might have been picking up the PR of LinkedIn (though the home page is an 8 not a 10) and been confused when it landed on the Griffin Credit page.

What you saw was probably a glitch in the tools. The site itself looks fine. It doesn't look at all like they're doing anything fishy and I wouldn't worry about working with them.

I'm not sure why the PR jumped up to 10, but I've seen weird things when moving from a site with a lot of PR to a site with little to no PR.

dynocat
07-30-2009, 10:42 AM
I couldn't follow the link without signing up, but would like to see their page source code to see if they're using the canonical tag in the head on the .com version of the homepage. Still seems odd though for the reasons others have mentioned.

Business Attorney
07-30-2009, 11:56 AM
When I clicked the "My Company" link on her profile and went to the business' home page, my toolbar PR shows 0/10.

vangogh
07-30-2009, 02:30 PM
I saw the 0/10 as well when I followed the link. Seeing the higher PR does happen though. For example I have a yahoo home page which I think shows as a PR of 9. Sometimes when I then visit another site the PR still shows as 9. It's just a glitch in some of the tools.

The main thing here though is the site in question seems fine and perfectly legit, though I would suggest they or their developer isn't too savvy when it comes to search engines. They're doing enough things wrong to indicate they aren't trying to spam the engines.