[itsprofitbaron]

Not going into all the regulation talk (partly because don't believe that Google needs regulation as another search engine is just an address bar/couple of clicks away) but with regards to:

  "One is to force Google to make their rankings more transparent."

Google does not care about SEO; they care about bad SEO. You can see this from their Webmaster Help Videos[1] to saying how they 'serve' the results[2] to explaining how their search engine works[3].

It also becomes more apparent within their Webmaster Guidelines[4] that, they do not like bad SEO.

You can easily use all of that knowledge to figure it out.

  "Google could have offer a kind of appeals process if a manual penalty is applied"

They do. It's called a reconsideration request[5]

  "The EU could put a special tax on the market leader, which would fund a subsidy for promising competitors. (Google's European office is currently registered in a low tax haven in Ireland.)"

That would actually discourage anyone from making a decent product. Why? Well if you make a good one people will use it, you will become market leader and you will receive a special tax.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/GoogleWebmasterHelp

[2] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en#3

[3] https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/insidesearch/howsearchwork...

[4] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

[5] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843?hl=en

[CamperBob2]

Google does not care about SEO; they care about bad SEO.

They should care about delivering the best quality search results to their users, and nothing else. As a user, I don't give a crap about SEO or link farming ethics or anything else. That stuff is Google's problem. By penalizing what is (reportedly) the best lyrics site, Google has made their problem my problem.

A fair page ranking system would be entirely transparent, rigidly enforced, and not "punitive." Should they delist RapGenius for breaking the rules? Sure, if the rules themselves provide for that outcome. But the second the infraction is corrected, the penalty should end, and the site should be restored to its proper rank.

Google is not a government agency. The more they act like one, the more people will treat them like one. Believe me, they aren't going to like where that road goes.

[itsprofitbaron]

  "They should care about delivering the best quality search results to their users, and nothing else"

That's why they focus on Bad SEO because it means that they won't be showing the best results to their users. Bad SEO means manipulating the results to rank instead of, showing the best results to users.

  "A fair page ranking system would be entirely transparent, rigidly enforced"

They penalised RapGenius for breaking their Webmaster Guideines[1] which are both transparent and enforced.

  "But the second the infraction is corrected, the penalty should end, and the site should be restored to its proper rank."

That's actually how it works. As I tweeted to Josh on Twitter[2] this actually happens to all sites once they've got themselves out of a penalty and the Google Algorithms trust the site again.

[1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

[2] https://twitter.com/profitbaron/status/415918373575213056

[CamperBob2]

So it's not the case that a 30-day penalty period is being enforced against them, as several other posts have claimed? If so, I stand corrected.

[itsprofitbaron]

The people who are claiming that do not know anything about SEO. They're pulling figures from fresh air. For instance, in the case of JC Penney[1] it took them 90 days to recover from their penalty but it took Interflora[2] 11 days etc.

The penalty is applied until, the site fall backs into the Google Guidelines[3]. Google actually helps Webmasters to get their site back in line with their guidelines through informing them what type of penalty[4] it is. For instance, if it is a link penalty like Rap Genius has, Google shows example links within Webmaster Tools (usually 3 of them) to provide insight, on links which Google considers to be falling outside of those guidelines.

However, the links which are going to be affecting Rap Genius were predominantly because of the "tweet-for-links" system, the identification and removal of links should be relatively quick and straightforward.

[1] http://searchengineland.com/90-days-later-google-lets-j-c-pe...

[2] http://searchengineland.com/interflora-gets-google-rankings-...

[3] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

[4] https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/2604771?hl=en&re...