I bought a PR 4 domain
PR4
This morning I opened my email and read with surprise that GoDaddy has just ‘captured’ a domain for me. You see I was reading some online articles how some people were buying expired domains with PR on them. I was suffering from Pagerank Deficiency Syndrome (PDS) after both my PR4 and PR2 website were ‘zerofied’ so I wanted to see if I can get one domain with decent PR. (pathethic ain’t it?).
Usually an expired domain name will just lose it’s PR once it is expired. However if you are fast enough and reserve an expiring domain using a service like the GoDaddy Back Order, it’s possible to get the domain name with it’s PR intact. (at least that’s what the online articles said anyway)
1st try: Failure
I went to search for an expiring domain and found one that was PR5. Used GoDaddy backorder feature but after a day, GoDaddy told me that the capture was unsuccessful.
2nd try: Failure (sort of)
GoDaddy allowed me the option to capture another domain name without additional cost so on my second try I chose a PR4 domain with a decent name. A day later, same email told me that the domain capture was unsuccessful. Feeling dejected, I didn’t continue and just left it at that.
However, after 3 days, I got another email from GoDaddy telling me that the capture was successful for the same domain name. It’s a pleasant surprise and my first thing that I did was install Wordpress on it. Then I went to the site and checked that it is indeed PR4. So I bought an expired PR4 domain for USD 18.95. Is that cheap?
Now the only thing to think about is: What do I put on it?
Related Links:
Does expired domain retain their PR ?(Webmasterworld Forum thread)
PS: Still paranoid showing the URL here as I don’t want it to be zerofied by Google.
Popularity: 36% [?]




November 22nd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
As far as I know, google pr is made per page not per domain. Also, google holds a cash of how the page looked before and about keywords it contained.
The PR will get wiped out after the page will bi blank for few days or if the keywords of the new page will be completly different form what the page was before.
And it doesent matter if you put your url here or not, since there must be other existent links to the page and google is hitting it anyways.
However, you did not a complete waist: the page obviously had good backlinks, and that’s what you can profit from. So just try to find that links using google or alexa, and you will know what your page should talk about to keep the links and eventually the PR
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I REALLY REALLY hope you are wrong as I REALLY REALLY want to keep that PR4.
Anyway I read from the webmasterworld in one of their threads that someone bought a PR6 domain the same way and it retained it’s PR 3 montsh later.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
eh so what is the domain name?
that’s really cheap .. 20 bucks for pr4.. lemme go do some shopping at godaddy as well 
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I linked back to your article
Great purchase anyway..
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I believe I would do what Greg said and do a search on google for all the backlinks. Then I would check google’s cache for those pages to get an idea of the content on them. Don’t steal the content, but make it somewhat similar. Then either do a permanent redirect for those pages to the pages you have setup, or if you can keep the link url the same as the backlinks then there’s no need to do the redirects. You need to do all of this pretty quick though. Good luck.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I tried to find out what the previous content was about to no avail.
I tried the wayback website but no history of it exist. Google cache was no help either as I couldn’t find a hint of content of that domain. It’s as if it’s no longer in Google’s index.
So it’s strange that it still retains it’s PR4. Well I guess I shouldn’t complain and just continue as if it’s a brand new site.