A lyrics website called RapGenius made news a few days ago when it was caught and punished by Google for using shady methods to boost its rank on Google search results. Google’s punishment was devastating for the website, but Google was merciful. It outlined how the website could help its situation and offered it a second chance. Now, after doing so, RapGenius is back in Google’s good graces.
The operators of RapGenius came up with a scheme to improve the site’s ranking in Google search results by scamming links — a shady practice of soliciting high ranking sites to trade “unnatural” links under the guise of mutual benefit. Tricking Google’s algorithm is against the rules, so when Web developer and technology blogger John Marbach outed the scheme on Dec. 23, it didn’t take long for Google’s webspam team to start investigating. The following punishment from the search giant was devastating. According to Quantcast, a Web traffic measurement firm, RapGenius’ daily unique pageviews plummeted 65 percent in the immediate aftermath of Google’s corrective action. But RapGenius has bounced back.
