Consolidation of domains and PR

Am I likely to benefit much from this process?

[vrtlw]

I currently own and manage a few sites.

About a year ago with every good intention of using to its fullest, I bought a new domain name and set about getting some suitable hosting for it. I did the initial design work and sought out some backlinks for the domain. It has a PR of 4.

I havent worked on this site for a long time now, the PR has not fluctuated and traffic (apart from spiders) is non-existant.

My main site (PR6) is experiencing healthy traffic levels and is in the same market sector as the PR4 site. The only reason I haven't consolidated these domains until now is that I was running a few CGI scripts. I have now transferred or replaced these scripts with new ones on my main site.

I already have a .htaccess 301 redirect for all parked domains on my main site and now wish to stop paying the hosting fees for the now unused domain.

Has anyone recently done this? What I would like to know is:

1. Will I really notice any benefit from the PR transfer from the PR4 site to the PR6?

2. Is it safe to just cancel the hosting, do the DNS changes and park the domain on the main sites account or should I do a 301 redirect from the existing account and wait a while until I cancel this hosting account.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[rfgdxm1]

>2. Is it safe to just cancel the hosting, do the DNS changes and park the domain on the main sites account or should I do a 301 redirect from the existing account and wait a while until I cancel this hosting account.

By this do you mean having both domains directly pointing at the same data? If so, this could cause a duplicate content problem.

[vrtlw]

If so, this could cause a duplicate content problem.

To clarify, I am using the address re-write method in .htaccess, when I try to visit my parked domains the address is re-written in the browser address bar.

[cabbie]

If the 2 domains were bought at different times I would give consideration to keep hosting the pr4 site and link it heavily to your pr6 domain like for e.g.1 link every page and possibly deep to your pr6.
This will transfer most of the pr as well as help give your pr6 an authorative boost.

[vrtlw]

Hi,

I'm wondering if this is a bit OT but it got moved to this thread by a Mod from the thread I originally posted in.

Any more input is greatly appreciated as the info already received hasn't led to a resolution (so i have to admit to bumping!)

Thanks,

Paul

[SevanB2]

Do the 301 reidrect from PR6 to PR4 (or vise versa) and it should turn your PR4 into PR6 or maybe even PR7. However, you should not shut down the hosting for 2 reasons...1) Google might not have a history database for things like this, so you will loose benefit of transfering the PR if the hosting is shut down 2) You will loose any incoming traffic to the site from existing links