Probably more about trying to manipulate the search rankings utilizing website networks than any copyright issues. |
It is a shame when Google slaps you with a penalty but there is not much you can do but fix you think might be the problem, monitor and ride out the storm. |
Lyrics databases are relatively often used by spammers or so called "homegrown SEOs". It's the same situation as with thousands of sites mirroring Wikipedia and DMOZ – they mix the original text content with promoted keywords and sites in order to fool search engines.
Maybe Google decided to change the way lyrics are scored because of the amount of spam (possibly also hurting legitimate lyrics sites). |
"Some Lyrics Websites" could be just about anything :)
I'd really suggest starting a thread in the Webmaster Help Groups, with the URL of the site, so that people can take a look at the actual site. It could easily be anything else – something that could happen to any site (eg. technical issues with crawling the site). |
Agreed. Lyrics-websites are a category of websites that feature a lot of ads, pop-ups and dirty seo-tricks. Without the original poster offering up the address to his website, this is hardly news-worthy. |
(I'll see what I can do, thanks guys.) |
Well... Google things seeklyrics.com has something related to malicious software (although the references aren't exactly clear):
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=seeklyrics.com
The others seem fine, according to Google:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=completealbumlyrics.com
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=lyricsandsongs.com
However, when I visit one those sites from work, our firewall says this:
<< Based on your corporate access policies, this web site (lyricsandsongs.com/) has been blocked because it has been determined to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network. This web site has been associated with malware/spyware. >> |
To be safe:
- all external JS and links have been removed (from my site that is)
- the server been moved to the other site of the US
Lets see if it might fix things...
And to be clear: it's not so much about me beeing blocked (and crying myself into sleep every night), more about businesses beeing 100% relient on the algoritmes of one company (G!). They can make or break you, and makes it difficult long term to run a business like that. |
The drop in the Alexa charts suggests that approx 95% of the traffic was coming from one search engine. Were the sites perhaps over-optimized for Google and not also targeting other search engines? |
Here is one such site via Google Groups as well issues identified.
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/744947c1277e3b0 |
