I think whoever said the revers happens with 301 redirect is wrong. When you do a 301 redirect correctly, the old site does not exist any longer for example this forum used to be at this url: Webmaster Forums - SEO SEM Web Hosting Web Design & Development Discussions and it was transferred here using 301 redirect, withing about 1 week, all the SERP results were change is major search engines to point to the new url and I am expecting the old PR to tranfer here at the next update.

Well, I have no experience with that, but I saw that it works. iwebtool foruma was reachable at iwebtool.com/talk when I registered there. After some time the faciliator decidet to run it as a sub level domain and redirected the site to talk.iwebtool.com. During the last PR update the new sld gained the old PR6

I have bought some domains with a PR5 so if I forward them to my site with a 301 I should inherit PR

In theory the PR5 should carry over to your new domain provided the links that give that domain PR5 in the first place are still pointing to it.

Cool so will do a mod_rewite on all 404's anyone know the best way to to do this?

I don't want any 404s so can point any url at box and a rewrite will display a file

OOh it is not as simple as that (gaining the old sites PR that is). PR is also gained from internal links, so if the old site had 20,000 internal pages many of them with backlinks, then unless you can snag those backlinks you are going to lose the link juice. Also Google is zeroing expired domains that change hands and change Ip's & Content. so you might have bought a pig in a poke.

I bought 4 test domains and in every case where I changed the ownership details they were zeroed (apart from the one that had not expired). The one that had not expired kept its pr4

The easiest way is redirect match, or a straight 301 redirect catch all. BUT this will dump everything on the home page.

My advice to you is to get a list of all the backlinks pointing to this site, and set up pages with the corresponding urls (even if they are dynamic, then just recreate them manually). then you can be sure you are keeping the link juice, and transferring them back into your site.

Potchy yes, but secure, as when the bot comes along, it will not see ALL the pages re-directed to the home page it will see the pages that people have 'voted' for still existing

It is called pagerank fraud and I just tested it. There reason why some have good page rank, is because if I point lets say appleitunes.com at apple.com with a 301 and leave for a few weeks then appleitunes.com inherits the page rank. Meaning anyone can point anything at anything to gain rank. Then change dns and sell the domain. Thats what happened with one of my domains. Unless you aquire a domain with a proper page rank (i,e lots of back links)

I suggest just park the site with a mod_rewite catch all. Then just link to your sites (for example on the footer of every page) as apposed to forwarding.
Other wise it gains the rank of what its forwarded to.

This seems strange I know but I've tested it.

Try

Bikerrightsezine.com - The Best Bike insurance Resources and Information. This website is for sale!

has a rank of 4 because it was pointed at

FastFred's Biker Ezine: Biker News, Photos, and Motorcycle Rights

before I bought it.

Best way to tell if it was pointed at another domains is with

Internet Archive and check back links.


Need more convincing ? This domains is for sale for $25000 but look

UrlTrends :: Trend Report For: http://travelhealth.com

Just forwarded to a 8/10 site