Google PageRank: A Strange Case Of Hyves

Jan 20, 2009 at 3:12pm ET by Matt McGee

This is one the most bizarre things I’ve seen come down the pike in a long time. Let’s see if you agree:

According to this post on Mediadonis, you can check if Google has penalized a domain or not by simply adding the word hyves as a subdomain and then checking the PageRank of that subdomain. Use my two primary blogs as examples:

http://hyves.smallbusinesssem.com/ – doesn’t exist, but will show toolbar PR7 http://hyves.hyperlocalblogger.com/ – ditto

According to the post, using “hyves” as a subdomain will produce one of three results:

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

So, the fact that my two domains show up as PR7 when “hyves” is added as a subdomain means they’re not penalized. In all the domains I’ve checked, this works. But at least one comment on the original post, and one in the discussion on our sister site, Sphinn, says it doesn’t always work as described.

What’s your experience? Does it hold true for domains you’re aware of that have been penalized by Google?

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

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8 COMMENTS ON Google PageRank: A Strange Case Of Hyves

whatcomweb, January 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm ET:

That is pretty interesting. Any examples of a penalized or banned URL anyone would care to share?

Andrey, January 20th, 2009 at 6:46 pm ET:

I found example with zero PR http://hyves.6millionsmiles.com
I’m not sure this is banned domain or not. It is simply a personal blog. When I search some keywords from this web site, it’s shows in Google results.

By the way, the captha is horrible on seachengineland! I cant read it. and i need to download plugin to hear those words….I posted it 3 times before it accepted.

debi_zyx, January 21st, 2009 at 1:37 am ET:

It may have worked yesterday, but it ain’t working now. Comments on Sphinn also agree that it’s stopped, and you get PR0 for all sites (I got that for hyves.google.com!). My firefox just tells me that it can’t find hyves.domain.com domains …

mattinertia, January 21st, 2009 at 5:02 am ET:

Doesnt work for me…

Nima, January 21st, 2009 at 1:27 pm ET:

It works on some of my sites and doesn’t on others. However it seems to work on most them.

An example that doesnt work: http://www.nyquistplot.com/.

As far as I know the site ranks well and I havent done anything to cause it to be banned but hyves.nyquistplot.com shows a pagerank of zero. This is a newer site (2 months old). I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Edgar Granados, January 21st, 2009 at 3:02 pm ET:

with dominions with 3 characters or less. more info in my blog: http://edgargranados.es/hyves-como-saber-si-estas-penalizado-por-google-pagerank/21/

chiropractic, January 21st, 2009 at 3:18 pm ET:
Premium member since 01/2009

I thought this was something someone created as a joke. Every domain I checked (including google.com and yahoo.com) came back with a PR0.

patshaughnessy, January 24th, 2009 at 3:55 am ET:

Looks like bunk to me:
Try inurl:hyves
returns lots of examples, most are not PR 7

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