Pagerank 9 links for sale
No, before you get ready to report me, I am not actually selling pagerank 9 links 
This post is going to be lengthy, so I apologise in advance for that – no way around it as there is a lot going on in this scam, but I hope it will help you falling into any traps when you are out building links. We’ll be going from the sleazy link sales forums, to hacked Egyptian government sites and beyond, so I hope you find it interesting.
It all started when a client emailed me the contents of a private message from someone trying to sell them a pagerank 9 link:
PAGERANK 9 Link Sales
We are selling links from very strong PR9 site.
Site language : English – US IP
Duration : monthly / 3 months / 6 months / Yearlyall links visible. no blogpost,hidden or hack.
Pm me if you are serious buyer.Prices not cheap
You can read the original sale offer thread here. I would have done this post without actual url’s, but when you attempt to use criminal activity to rip off one of my clients, then you lose the right to having your url’s kept hidden.
The pagerank 9 in question is http://universitevetoplum.com/, which appears to be a Hungarian campus of a USA college.
The pagerank appears to be valid:
So lets take a look at its backlinks:
Pagerank 9 – www.mohp.gov.eg – Egypts Ministry of Health
Pagerank 8 – www.ukzn.ac.za – South African University homepage
Pagerank 8 – www.presidency.gov.eg/index.html – Egyptian Presidents homepage
Pagerank 7 – www.caricomlaw.org – Official Caribbean Law site
Pagerank 7 – www.asil.org – The American Society of International Law Home Page
At this point, the original link for sale would certainly pass a quick examination – its pagerank is technically legit, and it has a handful of extremely strong backlinks pointing at it.
Lets examine each of those backlinks in detail:
www.mohp.gov.eg – Look at what can be seen in the source code: (warning: some of the links in it are nsfw, I would advise not typing them in your browser…)
Click to enlarge
So within the Egypt Ministry of Health pagerank 9 website, we have 6 links to mainly nsfw Turkish websites, and the pagerank 9 in question. The links are completely hidden from view, you cannot see them on the page itself.
www.ukzn.ac.za – This site is down right now, but you can view its Google cache. Then in the source code we have (click to enlarge):
So here we have a large international university, again linking to the pr9 in question, and yet more Turkish porn sites.
www.presidency.gov.eg/index.html – In the source of this one we have two separate lots of hidden links:
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
This time they’ve opted to hide a bunch of them by using a 15 x 15 white image (on a white background) to disguise the fact there is a link present. Again the links point to the PR9 site along with yet more Turkish porn.
www.caricomlaw.org – In the source of this one we have:
Click to enlarge
Yet more links to Turkish porn and our original site in question.
www.asil.org - So onto the source of the final one:
Click to enlarge
I’m sure it won’t be a surprise at this point – a link to the pr9, and some more NSFW turkish stuff. This time they have opted to use a 0 pixel size link to hide the facts the links are there. Again you cannot see them on the page.
It is amazing all of this is still working in 2010 – Its hardly rocket science to detect links hidden with css, or white squares on a white background as the linking image, or images set to size “width=0″. And it is undoubtedly working, since we can see the pagerank all flowing into http://universitevetoplum.com/, where the links are being sold for $650 per month.
Illegal? Sure. Profitable? Undeniably.
I hope anyone reading has learned a little from this on how to check links and make sure everything is as it seems – remember this doesn’t only need to apply to extremely high pagerank links. I would bet if these criminals applied the same tactics to get lower pagerank sites, it could go on forever unnoticed.
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14 Responses to “Pagerank 9 links for sale”
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Definitely helpful, thank you for this. Also thank you for the advice about Pr7 links given earlier on A4U
Well… it’s not something I would personally touch with a bargepole, but what is it that they’re doing that’s *illegal* exactly?
Selling links is perfectly legal, although you are breaking Google webmaster guidelines and risking the wrath there.
The illegal part comes when you hack Government websites to add your own backlinks to them…
I will buy this, you accept links to adult store on your pr9? Plz email payment infos, linkbuyer2010@googlemail.com. But I pay $400 month max,
“live by the sword.. die by the sword..”
If you do decide to sell PR9 links let me know.. SEO would be boring without stuff like this
Long live paid links!
There is always one who never reads the post before replying… thanks for the addition “a.m.”
Nick – the stuff going on here is way way over the top and extremely risky, both from a legal point of view and a plain old banning from Google point of view. I’m not saying don’t buy links, but I would never go near something like this in a million years.
I think the phrase “Hungarian campus of a USA college.” caught my eye. Whilst that might make sense to some people it makes none to me at all!
Avoid!
McDaniel College is a legit college, and it does have a Hungarian campus – http://www.mcdaniel.edu/2215.htm
The pagerank 9 site has absolutely nothing to do with the one above – its been set up by the scammers purely to try and pass itself off as a legit education site. Its nothing more than a scam. More than likely they could add copyright crimes to their already growing list of crimes
The PR9 wasn’t worth the money, but I enjoyed the porn *just kidding* it was in Turkish.
is this really real?
It was real in that the Pagerank was technically legit, rather than the usual faked.
Google seems to have at least partially caught it – toolbar pagerank dropped to 6…
admin edit – Don’t spam the name field. If you use a proper name/nickname you get a link, if you spam it you get the link killed.
Thanks for the advice,
I have seen a similar thing on a PR7 Chinese .gov site. A client of mine was offered it for an adult site which seemed dubious straight away. They wanted £60 a month which seemed good value at first.
Lets hope they get caught, I can’t imagine the Chinese gov letting them get away with a slap on the wrists can you.
WOW! I didn’t know SEO went to these lengths?! I’m still very much a noob to it all but I’m doing my best to try and get my small company some recognition in this scary wasteland they call the internet!
Thanks for the story, who knew SEO was so cloak and dagger!
It gets more and more hard to find the right linkbuilding method’s i guess. Good information in the post. I also got different offers on sites i dont trust at all. I will be more carefull when i recieve offers.