Unlinked sites recieve PageRank?

Recently I've found some reports of sites that have no backlinks at all recieving a PR of 2 (sometimes even 3). How can this be happening?

The sites have not been submitted to Google and have no backlink, but they do get a PR. An explanation could be that some WHOIS system keeps track of all new bought domains and therefore has a link to the new unlinked website. But recieving a PR 2 (or higher) this way is very unlikely as most WHOIS pages don't have a PR of 2. And a page can only get a PR as high as the page linking to it.

Other reasons for recieving PR is using a Google toolbar (as this seems to track the site you visit) or when someone recieved a link to your page in an email.

Also, websites showing statistics may cause Google to find your page and give it PageRank. This happens whenever you have a link to a site showing stats (and refferals) to the public.

There are many ways to get a backlink whithout doing anything. So to keep a site secret, you should make sure you block all spiders by a robots.txt and don't just rely on not creating any inbound links.

Added on: May 29, 2007 - 4:47 pm