I wrote it last week and I write it today, the Internet Marketing Business is getting more and more fierce. Sometimes even without a reasonor completely out of the blue - that is why the today`s post is a little more personal than the usual.
 
This morning, when I was browsing Digital Point Forums, reading the latest offers for links I found one post that caught my eye. A guy who calls himself Zagul had an offer which sounded really good when I read it: "Strong PR6 (internal pr5-pr6), siteweb link saeles, 3 yo website". Although I wondered how one can offer a strong PageRank 6 with the last update beeing 149 days ago, I was interested and opened the thread.
 
I was turned off when I saw that Zagul was only selling site-wide footer links on a hit counter and he had disclosed the actual URL. Without going further it was already clear to me that he was not selling links you want to buy for quality websites:

• Site-Wide Links: Site-wide links are by far not as worthy as single page links as they are considered as spammy by Google. Which makes absolutely sense.
• Footer-Links: Footer links are (most times) paid links and (most times) this is also quite obvious. That is why you do not want to buy footer links if you are looking for quality.
• Hit Counter: Hit counters are free services mostly created only to build PageRank very fast. Not long ago this worked pretty well, as every user links back to the hit counter homepage. Not only that this is unnatural linking, many hit counters are only created to sell high PageRank links and therefore Google doesn`t like the. That is also why many hit counters, like GoStats for example lost PageRank (from 9 to 7) during the last two or three PageRank updates.
• Disclosed URL: Everybody knows that there are Google employees on Digital point Forums. I do not say that they are looking for paid links, but do we have to show them our websites? Disclosing the URL means devaluating the linkspot you want to sell.
• Large Amount Of Links: Selling 15 footer links on a website that already has sidebar links does not indicate quality links.

Than I was shocked when I saw the pricings for the links.  Although he offers a 50% discount for Digital Point Forum members the prices were still quite high for site-wide footer links on a hit counter site. One month costs $12.00, $35.00 for three months, $65.00 for six and the price for an annual textlink is $120.00. After that I started investigating in order to find out if the prices are legitimate.
 
My first step was checking the whoisdata of the domain. I hoped to find that Zagul owned the website for the full three years, as advertised. This is an important point, as com/ net/ org domains loose their PageRank (internal PageRank, not requestable) after they expire or get sold (What happens with the PageRank after a sale with significant whois changes depends on the new owner and how he/ she cares for the site). Google started this to prevent people from selling PageRank domains, which was quite profitable until october 2004. That was when websites wrote about how Google Changes the Industry. In 2007 Internet Marketing is a  rioutous teenager, back in 2004 it was more a child. Back than there was no Matt Cutts, but there was Google Guy. And Google Guy told us: "One resulting improvement with this index is better handling of expired domains - the authority for a domain will be reset when a domain expires, even though dangling links to the expired domain are still out on the web. We'll be rolling this change in over the next few months..." I bet many people do not remember this time and what happened back than. Even last year one guy asked in Webmasterworld forums if "Expired domain names lose page rank". I can say, yes they do!
 
Coming back to my story: Unfortunately the last whois change on the domain name was on september 20th, 4 days ago. That means the PageRank Zagul offes us, the PageRank we see now by using the many tools out there on the net is only the so called "Toolbar PageRank", which Google used to update every 3-4 months when the so called the PageRank update happens. PageRank updates every day, every minute but we cannot see this PageRank. This makes buying links on PageRank domains so difficult. You have to investigate thoroughly before you can be sure that the PageRank you see is also the PageRank the site has.
 
Back to the domain name: I found out that the domain was sold at least twice in the last 2 years . Once in january 2006 on sitepoint and one more time during the last couple of weeks. It was advertised on russian websites and forums, siteviper, bizmp and of course Digital Point, where it was sold on July 21st this year. It is highly likely that an owner change is considered something like an expiration. This makes a domain loose trust with Google especially when it get`s flooded with theme irrelevant links right after the change. To sum up, I think, the links are not worth the money they cost and with a major Google update coming up this offer is something you wanna stay away from when you want to be on the safe side. Actually, Google is thinking about giving up PageRank if that happens, buyers only get non-quality links. One thing is sure, with not every subpage showing PageRank and the information I have found, none can talk about a "strong PR 6 PageRank"
 
After a little more sneaking around in the Google SERPs looking for more information on the domain name, I went back to Digital Point Forums. Maybe I am too selective when it comes to buying links but...can you ever be too selective? If you have a quality site you want to be very gently and highly selective.
 
Of course I wanted to let the buyers and potential buyers know that the value of the links they bought or plan to buy might be not as valuable as advertised. In my eyes a nice step towards the community. I fall into many traps myself and if I can help others not to make the same mistakes like me, I do this. So I posted at 6:10 am, in a harsh way (I admit) that Zagul is misleading the potential buyers and added a short explanation why I think that.
 
And than, without knowing what I have done, a huge load of Personal Messages is flushing into my account. I replied to every single message, explaining what I have discovered and why I think this offer might be misleading. Just because I could not stand the many messages asking the same questions, I posted at 6:59 am a little more detailed explanation in the thread. At 7:15 am Zagul writes me a message  with the headline "u know how to use PM?" Inside he wrote "Thanks for your comments and now reporting your post to Mods!"
 
Than I decided to edit the post I did 16 minutes earlier and added: "My post is nothing that needs to be reported. I don`t want to ruin your business, I only want people to know that they do not get what you say. Which is...fair I guess. If it is an expired/ snapped/ traded Domain your offer is misleading. If not, please accept my apologies." I also wrote "I will write some more detailed information on that special and always confusing topic my website tonight. I believe this can help the business get more serious and understandable again." And of course I gave added an explanation for editing my post: " Last edited by jabz.biz : Today at 7:37 am. Reason: your PM"
 
My decision was made. I wanted to write about this topic on my blog. This is what i am doing right now. With my decision to explain even more detailed and me apologizing I thought the nightmare is over, but it turned out that I was wrong. At 7:35 am Zagul worte me another personal message: "Sorry but i think you spamer and flooder, go to archive.org befor posting your Dirty thoughts in my thread."
 
Of course I had to reply because I did not want to get into more trouble: "Ok Zagul,..let`s clear that... I did not want to offend you nor talk bad about your offer. The domain you have is expired and therefore there is no PageRank but the Toolbar PageRank." I explained again and added " Please man, stop the hate. You learned something and I have a bad day now because of that." And I really had. After one more Message from Zagul to which I did not reply anymore I thought again that this is over but I was wrong again.
 
Obviously Zagul had found his task of the day,...ruining mine. I gave me a bad iTrader rating. iTrader is a module for vBulletin, the forum software, that allows people to make deals on the forum and afterwads rate the other party. It is very similar to Ebay`s user rating. Unfortunately everybody can give someone a rating even if there was no deal. My iTrader rating from Zagul, a person I was never in business with, is:
 
"Refuse to pay! post SOLD after change the post and say fake pr for 100%true site"
 
Now this is something! I really tried to be nice and friednly, but after that I was really mad. Aleksey Zagulyev aka Zagul, really shows some nerves. Luckily one can report bad ratings, which I did. Do I have to live with that rating? In my eyes the moderators should react on such behavior...and it turned out they did. When I came back from lunch I found a warning from Digital Point Forums in my inbox:
 
 
"Dear jabz.biz,
You have received a warning at Digital Point Forums.

All the best,
Digital Point Forums"
 
 
I would like to believe that this is just a coincidence but when you look at what I got my warning for, it is just a shame. Of course, next time I will copy and paste the statistics of the domain name but was that really necessary?
 
What have I learned? Simple...keep knowledge (PageRank on expired Domains get`s lost), experience (that expired domains and sold domains with significant whois changes are on a similar level) and content (my writings) for yourself. Please let me know, what would you have done or would you do in my position? I am also interested in your opinion on what happened.
 
P.S.: I still have this iTrader rating and I reported it more than 13 hours ago. This is bad!