Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam, But Resolution In Progress

Google hit back hard today after it learned lyrics site Rap Genius had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results. Now RapGenius.com doesn’t appear on the first page of results for a search of “Rap Genius,” and popular queries like “Jay-Z Holy Grail Lyrics” don’t bring up the startup like they used to.

View the Original article

Widespread Apple App Store Search Rankings Change Sees iOS Apps Moved Over 40 Spots, On Average

Apple has again tweaked its iOS App Store algorithms, and the changes have brought about widespread search ranking changes across both iPhone and iPad devices. That’s search rankings, to be clear – meaning where an app is returned when a user searches for a particular keyword, like “music” or “banking,” for example, in the App Store. In other words, it’s not “ranking,” as in where an app lies on the App Store’s top charts.

The change was first spotted by app marketing tools provider MobileDevHQ, which keeps a close eye on factors that would affect App Store Optimization, or ASO as it’s often called. (Basically, that’s SEO for mobile app store search).

The company says the change occurred between 12/11 and 12/12, and is affecting both iPhone and iPad applications. The average ranking change they saw was 41.5 positions, which is 8 times the normal ranking change seen on an average day for iPhone results. Typically, the usual daily change is around 5 positions, for comparison’s sake.

The search ranking changes on the iPhone seem to be larger than those seen during the iOS 7 release (see bar chart below), which was also significant. And it’s affecting mainly App Store search rankings, as noted above, not the top charts, though this is now under investigation.

View the Original article