Barry Schwartz of seoroundtable.com posted about a pre-penguin ranking check hack using which pre-Penguin rankings of a Penguin-hit website can be reproduced. The hack is like this: [TargetKeyword -amazon.com]. Using this query, I was able to reproduce the pre-Penguin rankings of two Penguin-hit sites in Google.com and Google.com.au. Out of curiosity, I replaced “amazon.com” with “ebay.com” and the hack worked just fine. I then replaced “amazon.com” with “google.com” and the hack again worked. I replaced “google.com” with our site “seoindia.net” and the hack again worked fine for me and I was able to reproduce the pre-Penguin rankings of two Penguin-hit sites – one in Google.com and the other in Google.com.au.

Does the hack:

1. work for you?

2. if yes, does it work with any domain or only with amazon.com. Let me know in comments.