Rap Genius, a startup with $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz has just been clobbered by Google. The reason? They were caught trying to game Google to get higher search rankings.

Google's search results are basically based on how many sites are linking to your site to determine where you should be in rankings. Rap Genius asked people to add links to Rap Genius' pages on their site, in a somewhat crude practice.

So Google retaliated. And now when you search for "Rap Genius", you'll get its Twitter page, Wikipedia entry, Facebook page, but you won't get a direct link to the website.

Rap Genius and Google are reportedly working on a solution to fix the problem.

What is Rap Genius anyway?

The site provides translations of rap lyrics and it helps make sense of the things people like Kanye are saying in his songs.

After getting caught trying to game Google, Rap Genius apologized, but at the same time, tried to deflect blame by saying others do the same:
"We effed up, other lyrics sites are almost definitely doing worse stuff, and we’ll stop. We’d love for Google to take a closer look at the whole lyrics search landscape and see whether it can make changes that would improve lyric search results."
Ironically, that might be reason that Google all but wiped out Rap Genius from its search results.

You're better off not pissing the biggest internet player in the world. Especially if your service depends on it.