Rap Genius is Back on Google

Just as a thought experiment ... how tempting do you think it would be for Google to do the following:

1) Run a query to identify all companies that cut their AdWords spending over 50% over the last year.

2) Look at which of these companies are now getting significant numbers of click from organic results.

3) Find out what is causing them to rank high organically.

4) Penalize them using a generic message and refuse on principle to answer any inquiries as to why.

Apart from (anec-)data that seems to be pointing towards this already happening; should we be OK as a market with this approach? Especially when considering that the rules are so vague that almost every site is guaranteed to break some of Google's guidelines?

I don't. I also don't know if this is not the case. Do you? This uncertainty IS the reason for the current loss of faith.

> Matt Cutts said they've relisted them quickly because AH slipped Google some cash?

I never said cash exchanged hands. I doubt it did. Can you with a 100% surety say that a special favor of any kind did not occur?

> Maybe RapGenius followed their cleanup policy correctly

What clean up policy. If there is such a policy why isn't it public, why doesn't anyone know of it? [0]

> (RapGenius was) relisted naturally

A manual modification of the algorithm is not what has been established as natural over the last decade+.

> Thousands of sites I'm sure re de/relisted every day that you don't hear about (because they aren't being talked about on HN and no one outside here cares)

Ah, but know tens of these sites that were penalized, as in know 'em in and out, know the whole team, know of every SEO practice they implemented, these only include those that were penalized for having site structures similar to content farms (themes, permalinks and similar post type cross linking between posts) that were not even replied too let alone getting a chance. I also know a lot of SEO professionals who don't know any site that was afforded this (I emailed 'em, if I hear of one I'll update the post).

These sites were all with 300K+ uniques a month && 1MM+ pageviews/month.

HN is not my only source of information and news.

> are you sure none of those get relisted as quickly as RapGenius

Yes.

edit: [0] the only tool that I know Google allows webmasters to use to reduce potential penalty is the disavow links tool[1]. In the past I have seen this only useful for people who were targeted by link bombing etc. at times it was because a SEO practioner did in fact use some shady link sources.

Kudos to RapGenius for talking about it in their blog post, nonetheless, the results were still too quick (not judging rapgenius or their connections... only targeting Google).

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

I like to believe that Google checked the link profile again and found a large amount of low-quality links removed. Google would not remove a penalty if the spammy links were still abundant. So that they are out of a manual penalty is justified.

Rap Genius showed good intentions to comply with the guidelines. They went out of their way to clean up their act. These were no doorway pages or elaborate linking schemes with their own servers. It was a Linking Bieber Scheme that is considered greyhat in the industry, and after this, will probably be less popular.

This was a large and visible PR drama. Of course both Rap Genius and Google were on top of things. Google never stated that this was to be a month-long ban. We don´t know how those thousands of other sites were penalized. Maybe the large majority is so spammy/crappy that they simply won´t rank near the top with their spammy links removed, on the merits of their content and audience alone. For sites that are entirely build on manipulating SERPs, then yeah, a Google penalty can seem permanent. To me, that is an ok thing.

About the connections. Sure they help. I don´t see what is wrong though with leveraging your connections when there are millions on the line. Maybe a connection humbly asked: Hey, we effed up, how can we restore trust? This thread makes it sound like the connections pressured Google into removing the penalty. That seems unlikely if we all give the benefit of the doubt.