The cofounders of Rap Genius got lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings, courtesy of Google. Matt Cutts, Google's head of search, promised he was looking into the lyric site's SEO scheme. His punishment this morning was swift and brutal.

How has Rap Genius distinguished itself from all the other lyrics sites? With sweet, sweet old school spam techniques, or as Silicon Valley likes to call it "growth hacking." The tactic is so shady that Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, felt compelled to publicly state that his team is "aware and looking into it."