Does a website keep its Google PageRank after you buy it?

[Wayne]

A lot of websites advertised for sale have a certain Google PageRank but will they keep that PR after they change ownership? And especially, mightn't the PR change when the new owner adds to or changes some of the content?
How does that work?

[Jake]

Ranking should generally stick, search engines supposedly examine the whois data for a domain name, this may be the only indication of changing hands.

Remember page rank is only updated about 5 times a year, so the effect of changes is not seen for a while, you can find a calendar giving the dates, the rank of a site might have already changed before it is bought, the rank display has just not been updated to show recent changes.


Some content changes can cause a short term dip that it will recover from.