Music lyrics website Genius has accused Google of lifting from their site, claiming that “watermarked” lyrics have shown up in the search engine’s results.

Ever since Genius launched close to a decade ago, it has become known as a useful, trustworthy repository for song lyrics.

Originally named Rap Genius, the site expanded its focus in 2014, allowing users to annotate lyrics by any their favourite artists, ensuring levels of depth and accuracy not seen on other sites.

However, Genius has now accused Google of using some underhanded tactics to drive visitors away from the lyrics site and instead use the results that show up in a cursory search instead.

In a new report from the Wall Street Journal, representatives from Genius have claimed that Google have used “watermarked” lyrics in their search results, meaning that they were directly lifted from the site.

So how does this work? Well, if you were to do a Google search for lyrics to a song, the first result will likely be a box that lists the lyrics for your viewing pleasure, with a Genius result usually following next.

Genius has claimed that lyrics used in these boxes aren’t actually sourced by Google themselves, rather, they come directly from the competing website.

Genius say that they can prove this, having watermarked their lyrics by launching an algorithm in 2016 that alternates between different types of apostrophes (‘ and ’) within their song lyrics.

When these are collated and converted into morse code, they reportedly spell out the word “red handed”, allegedly proving Google’s guilt in the matter after finding evidence of the damning apostrophes in Google’s results.

“Over the last two years, we’ve shown Google irrefutable evidence again and again that they are displaying lyrics copied from Genius in their Lyrics OneBox,” Genius’ Chief Strategy Officer Ben Gross explained. “This is a serious issue, and Google needs to address it.”

In a statement offered up to Engagdet, Google have denied any wrongdoing, but noted that they will “end our agreements” with partners if they’re found to be partaking in shady dealings.

“The lyrics displayed in the information boxes and in Knowledge Panels on Google Search are licensed from a variety of sources and are not scraped from sites on the web,” the statement reads.

“We take data quality and creator rights very seriously, and hold our licensing partners accountable to the terms of our agreement. We’re investigating this issue with our data partners and if we find that partners are not upholding good practices we will end our agreements.”

While this news comes amidst reports that Google is facing an antitrust investigation, this isn’t the first time that Genius and the iconic search engine have come to blows, with Google having penalised the lyric site for violating backlink guidelines back in 2013.

Check out a lyrical breakdown from Genius: