Search Engine Land
  • SEO
    • > All SEO
    • > What Is SEO?
    • > SEO Periodic Table
    • > Google: SEO
    • > Bing SEO
    • > Google Algorithm Updates
  • PPC
    • > All PPC
    • > What is PPC?
    • > Google Ads
    • > Microsoft Ads
    • > The Periodic Tables of PPC
  • Focuses
    • > Local
    • > Commerce
    • > Shopify SEO Guide
    • > Content
    • > Email Marketing Periodic Table
    • > Social Media Marketing
    • > Analytics
    • > Search Engine Land Awards
    • > All Focuses
  • SMX
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • About
    • > About Search Engine Land
    • > Newsletter
    • > Third Door Media
    • > Advertise

Processing...Please wait.

Search Engine Land » Channel » Content » Google’s Rap Genius Penalty Results In Huge Traffic Declines For The Lyrics Site

Google’s Rap Genius Penalty Results In Huge Traffic Declines For The Lyrics Site

Before Christmas, Rap Genius was outed for link schemes and then on Christmas, Google penalized the site for those link schemes. The penalty is still on and a couple metrics sites show huge drops in traffic for the site, some as much as losing 90% of their traffic since the penalty. Marcus from Search Metrics […]

Barry Schwartz on December 30, 2013 at 9:12 am

rapgenius-logoBefore Christmas, Rap Genius was outed for link schemes and then on Christmas, Google penalized the site for those link schemes. The penalty is still on and a couple metrics sites show huge drops in traffic for the site, some as much as losing 90% of their traffic since the penalty.

Marcus from Search Metrics published the impact this Google penalty had on their search visibility in Google. Marcus noted that there was a 92% drop in search visibility according to their metrics.

Search Metrics tracked hundreds of keywords that were impacted by this penalty, not just their home page but their “whole domain.” The penalties resulted in their keyword rankings dropped off the first page and back to page four, five or worse. Marcus feels that Google “devalued the site’s incoming links and additionally gave them a keyword penalty for the anchor texts of the incoming links.”

Here are charts from Search Metrics and Quantcast, showing the drop:

rapgenius-searchmetrics

rapgenius-quantcast

Here are some of the keywords that took a hit, but there were plenty of others:

loser-rankings_rapgenius.com_

The impact, as you can see, was serious and many links were downgraded and the site’s reputation was harmed.

Christoph Cemper from Link Research Tools did a deep analysis of the links that appeared to be negatively impacting the site. The research showed that the site had an unusual level of deep links and unnatural links. But as you know, Rap Genius was benefiting from these links until someone outed them and Google manually applied a penalty.

It seems, at least for Rap Genius, that the Penguin algorithm had little to no impact on these link schemes deployed by the site.

For more on this story, see:

  • Google Is Looking Into Rap Genius Linking Scheme Masked As Affiliate Program
  • Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For Link Schemes

New on Search Engine Land

    The latest jobs in search marketing
    3 content marketing strategies to support SEO success
    Google Analytics 4 guide for PPC
    SEO reporting to impress: How to successfully report your SEO process, efforts and result
    9 ways to become an SEO problem-solver

About The Author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

Related Topics

ContentGoogle Algorithm UpdatesGoogle: SEOSEO

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS The SMX Conference logo.

Learn actionable search marketing tactics that can help you drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes (virtual)

June 14-15, 2022: SMX Advanced (virtual)

November 15-16, 2022: SMX Next (virtual)

Learn More About Our SMX Events

The MarTech Conference logo.

Discover time-saving technologies and actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges.

Start Discovering Now: Spring (virtual)

September 28-29, 2022: Fall (virtual)

Learn More About Our MarTech Events
Webinars

Benchmark Your Social Media Performance For a Competitive Edge

Take a Crawl, Walk, Run Approach to Multi-Channel ABM

Content Comes First: Transform Your Operations With DAM

See More Webinars
Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Sales Enablement Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Digital Experience Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Call Analytics Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports
White Papers

How to use AI to make your PR more human

The State of Influencer Pricing

How to Measure Influencer Performance

Reputation Management For Healthcare Organizations

Unlock the App Marketing Potential of QR Codes

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily search news and analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • SEO
  • PPC

Our Events

  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX
  • MarTech

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.