
Google Just Made Rap Genius Disappear - jgalt212
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/26/rap_genius_faces_google_s_wrath.html
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adventured
This article acts like Rap Genius just got put out of business by Google. That
is not what happened. They've suffered a serious short term penalty that will
fade, and assuming they clean up their SEO mess, six months from now it'll be
like this never happened.

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neoterics
In SEO, all PR is good PR, the amount of links they are getting from all this
news coverage could easily make them rebound from this. They need to cease
these practices, disavow links and they'll be back, even stronger. Reminds me
of that sunglasses website that was ranking really well even after the
negative press. Obviously in that case Google had to do something drastic to
save face.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)

This is nothing but a media trial. If this didn't blow up on HN, it would have
been largely ignored by Google and they would have just gotten away with a
slap on the wrist.

Google likes to do this to send a message, but the funny thing is they do this
to ACT like it doesn't matter who is breaking their guidelines, could be
Fortune 500 or even Google itself, they will penalize you.

But the reality is that in each and every case, once the media moves on to the
next shiny thing, the penalties were reversed:

[http://searchengineland.com/interflora-gets-google-
rankings-...](http://searchengineland.com/interflora-gets-google-rankings-
back-150366) [http://searchengineland.com/90-days-later-google-lets-j-c-
pe...](http://searchengineland.com/90-days-later-google-lets-j-c-penney-out-
of-timeout-78223) [http://searchengineland.com/google-chromes-paid-link-
penalty...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chromes-paid-link-penalty-now-
lifted-115560)

Spamming and grey hat SEO practices are like speeding, everyone does it, but
only a few get caught.

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brymo
Is all this media coverage making rapgenius more popular?

~~~
psbp
Is all this eggnog making me fat?

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drdiablo
I can't believe Google actually did that. They just proved that they can do
whatever they want with no justification what so ever. They just proved that
they aren't a service provider anymore, they're a service controller that
will, if it wants to, filter the flux of information and let through only
parts of the internet.

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samuli
Rap Genius is still #1 at Bing. I wonder if people these days think something
doesn't exist if its not on Google.

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gum_ina_package
I can't believe it. I just searched google (public results on btw) for "Rap
Genius". Their homepage wasn't even in the first 10 results. All links to news
articles. Wow.

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badapple
what about others that are doing the same thing.

for example TINT

tintup.com

once you create a free account they have the following:

Dear valued Tint customer, Would you like to write a review about Tint? In
exchange for your opinions/blog post, we are giving away 50% off FOREVER promo
code for our Plus Plan. To learn more, click the button below:

screen shot: [http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c](http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c)

