[bobbyi_settv]

> The only reason it isn't fair is that the site disappears from Google for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius].

So if instead of being rapgenius.com, they had shelled out big bucks for the domain lyrics.com, they would continue to rank for searches for "lyrics"? Our would someone at Google make a subjective decision about what terms are unique enough to their brand for them to not be penalized for?

Either of these seem much less fair to me than the status quo that all spammers get penalized for all search terms.

[itsprofitbaron]

In that example they should still rank for "lyrics.com" which would be the BRAND term.

Google actually have done an EMD update to devalue sites trying to rank for generics using a generic domain.

As you can see using Google Adword Keyword Planner[1] for all locations in English the average searches are:

Lyrics - 1.2M avg. searches/month

Lyrics.com - 110k avg. searches/month

[1] https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/

[shawnz]

I think that it would make sense to allow direct queries for the trademark, e.g., "rapgenius" in the case of rapgenius. In your example "lyrics" would certainly not be trademarkable, so I would imagine "lyrics.com" or similar would be used instead.