Rap Genius, the website that was recently punished by Google getting buried to page 5 of the coveted search engine's relevant results, is now back and fully operational once again.
Lyrics site Rap Genius tried to manipulate the way it turned up on Google's search results by soliciting bloggers to link to its pages in exchange for exposure via Rap Genius' social media channels. Google doesn't allow people to exchange goods and or services for better presence on its search engine, so it promptly punished the site by removing it from its front-page results.
This move caused traffic to Rap Genius' site, which provides lyrics for songs and fan interpretations of what those lyrics mean, took a significant dip as the entire service relied on people being able to search lyrics and find the site.
However, Rap Genius co-founder Illan Zechory has announced that the site is back up and running on Google.
"It takes a couple days for Google to re-index everything, so search results are a little wonky right now, but we are officially reinstated," he said in an e-mail to Entrepreneur.
To fix the problem, Rap Genius explained that they examined each of the site's thousands of URLs and categorized each one based on whether it contained unnatural links. Then they started e-mailing bloggers and asking them to take down those links that were deemed to be unnatural.
"To Google and our fans: we're sorry for being such morons," the Rap Genius post reads. "We regret our foray into irrelevant unnatural linking. We're focused on building the best site in the world for understanding lyrics, poetry, and prose and watching it naturally rise to the top of the search results."
Tell us what you think of the Rap Genius controversy? Do you think the site should have been reinstated so easily? Do you think Google was wrong for taking it down at all? Comment and share your thoughts with us on the issue below.
