In my 20 or so manual tries of billboard top 100 songs and some other random ones, Genius is top 1-2 in results, so they might have recovered fine in the SEO sense...

That is a really interesting example. They had the best product by far. Google penalizing them is almost like penalizing its own users because they provide a much better product for lyric searches, in my own opinion. Every other lyric site before them was generally full of spammy ads with no added value, but Genius actually tries to add to the experience. Some songs more than others, but still a world away from the old lyric sites.

Recovered in the financial sense- they recently fired a quarter of their staff:

https://technical.ly/brooklyn/2017/03/16/genius-layoffs-verg...

I do agree that their product is the best by far; they're my go to site for lyrics.

They've not entirely recovered in terms of what comes up in search results, but they're still the go-to for anyone I know who looks up lyrics on a regular basis.

They got a little public slap on the wrist, they recovered just fine after Google removed the manual action.

https://www.semrush.com/info/genius.com+(by+organic)

I mean "recover" in the financial sense, they've recently laid off a quarter of their staff:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14924238/rap-genius-web-an...

But you said they never really recovered. There's no way to interpret what you wrote but to suggest they never really recovered from their ranking demotion. Which isn't the case right? Their financial issues go far beyond their google rankings (namely I think Genius hasn't really gotten big with annotations beyond lyrics. Not at their valuation and hype)