It really sounds strange, but mysteriously it just works…
At the moment, it´s possible to check if a domain got penalized for selling links (or lost pagerank due any other kind of malicious activity).
The only thing you gotta do is put “hyves” as a subdomain in front of the domain to be checked.
=> hyves.domain.com
It´s important that hyves is no existing subdomain of that peticular domain, otherwise it won´t work!
You will now get one of three different results for the pagerank of this non-existent subdomain -> PR7, PR4 and PR0.
PR7 means that the domain is perfectly fine
PR4 means that the domain got penalized by google
PR0 means that the domain got banned in Google
It´s really totally weird, but all the domains I checked had the right result! And all of my friends had a 100% accurate results too! I seriously have no idea, why this works, but apparently it does…
Check for example:
-> hyves.oswd.org (PR 4 – Clearly selling links under “Supporters”, and lost Pagerank lately)
-> hyves.tomshardware.com (PR 4 – Clearly selling links under “Partners”, and lost Pagerank lately)
-> hyves.google.com (PR 7 – Clearly not selling links 
…)
It really works with every domain I know that lost pagerank due to link-selling over here in germany… so weird!!
So check it fast, cause I think that this thing, for whatever reason it works, won´t work much longer, now that´s it´s public
Thanks to Bastian, Torsten and Mario!
UPDATE: Apparently it´s not working anymore! All sites are returning a PR0 at the moment. Pretty strange, right? I mean -> if it was bullshit or some kind of hoax, why was Google so incredibly fast to make it not work anymore…
Yeah, it doesn’t work. Too bad. There was no sure-fire way to check these sorts of things. Probably not a hoax, but a Google experiment. Alpha not Beta like all their released products that are always in development.
It was a dream while it lasted.
it doesn’t work
Well, if you´d bother to read the update, I wrote about 2 month (!!) ago, you´d know, it doesn´t work any more:
“UPDATE: Apparently it´s not working anymore! All sites are returning a PR0 at the moment. Pretty strange, right? I mean -> if it was bullshit or some kind of hoax, why was Google so incredibly fast to make it not work anymore…
”
also der Bericht ist ja sehr interessant und ich habe das mal gleich ausprobiert mit hyves.domain.de und bin leider auf keine Ergenisse gestoßen
I try it to and it doesn´t work. whats happend?
Und auch für Dich Spätzünder zum mittlerweile vierten Mal -> LIES DAS UPDATE, welches ich vor über 3 Monaten (!!!) hinzugefügt habe:
UPDATE: Apparently it´s not working anymore! All sites are returning a PR0 at the moment. Pretty strange, right? I mean -> if it was bullshit or some kind of hoax, why was Google so incredibly fast to make it not work anymore…
Die ganze Sache hat lediglich ein paar Stunden am 20.Januar funktioniert!
hello. i tried your example buy it doesnt work for me. why?
Because you didn´t read the Update at the end of the post…
Very interesting find; I can’t get it to work… but this article was published long ago — love these types of finds though
Thanks for letting us know.
Andy
Too bad that this does not work anymore. However I can’t see how this is possibly even possible to do. To create a sub-domain you need access to the websites files etc and Google has no way of getting that access. It just sound weird.
However if it worked it must have been cool.
Weiß jemand ob das mit dem hyves heutzutage noch funktioniert?
Very interesting …
Thanks for letting us know.