9 ms·

Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

148 points by iball 13y ago

lemming 13y ago
I notice that they are actually capable of writing English like a normal person when it benefits them.
mwcurry 13y ago
Can anyone post the original controversy? The letter mentions it but doesn't link to it.
- jlebron2 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658
  - julespitt 13y ago
    Jinx!
- julespitt 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658
  - Destitute 13y ago
    I've never read anything more douchey in my life. Are they trying to appeal to the "hip-hop" crowd with the feigned street talk?
ryes 13y ago
These guys knew exactly what they were doing. Nice fake pr apology trying to trick your users into thinking you are clean. Example of anyone can get addicted to bad tactics and $ coming in. But you need to remember to not get a lot of PR and do grey tactics at the same time.
drsim 13y ago
Oh dear. The schoolkid gets caught and says 'yeah, but Jim did such and such that's worse'.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
keltex 13y ago
These are just paid links. It falls under the category "exchanging goods or services for links". The "service" is a tweet or post on facebook. You can report them to Google here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
milkshakes 13y ago
what a joke of a non-apology. i hope the search quality team makes an example out of them.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
Well played. The Bieber song linked in the first paragraph is the one they wanted pushed in the first place to get their page rank up. Looks like an apology but is a huge SEO push.
- thefallsman 13y ago
  Interesting point, write a controversial article, get love link love then link out to your money page (ranking lyrics for Bieber must be a goldmine...)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Pushing traffic to both the Bieber page & the Beyonce page. Both HUGE numbers of search terms. Interestingly enough - they weren't very specific about getting penalized and/or when it happened.
- onedev 13y ago
  This is hilarious. They thought no one would notice. I have no opinion on any of this but I found this detail amusingly ironic.
davemel37 13y ago
This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.) Furthermore, while links in twitter might not pass link juice they most certainly influence search rankings, whether its personalized search, or actual algorithms that take into consideration social signals. The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant? You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?
- Goopplesoft 13y ago
  Very childish indeed, it was not an apology at all but a 'they're doing it too' kind of post. I've seen this type of childish behavior on a couple occasions with them (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo )... I'm quite surprised they decided take this approach. Edit: mirror, since I'm betting the text will be modified soon considering the reactions here. http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp
  - look_lookatme 13y ago
    Childishness seems ingrained in this company's DNA.
    - strathmeyer 13y ago
      Who, HackerNews'?? It's always so funny when people insult someone and assume the rest of us will know what they are talking about instead of assuming your comments apply to yourself.
thefallsman 13y ago
This seems like a good SEO method - point out that you were doing something extremely minor in violation of Google's guidelines, then point out that everyone else breaks most of the guidelines. All the same time do this in a niche that is known for spam, all the while hoping that Google will read it and manually slap everyone else, giving you a better overall ranking.
- rralian 13y ago
  What they did doesn't seem "extremely minor" to me. It's about as textbook as you can get as an example of something that will piss off google. Reminds me of all the grey/black methods "facebook apps" (remember them?) would use to trick people into spamming their friends with invites. In my experience, this stuff can work in the short-run of maybe two or three years... and maybe that's all that a lot of startups really care about... flipping a company in a couple years. But if you want to build a lasting business (not sure that's the goal of RapGenius), you build a service that provides real value to people that they gladly talk about to their friends. And you approach SEO by providing interesting, fresh, rich, easily-indexable, accessible content. Not by seeding thousands of Bieber links back to your site. In my experience the people who do these grey/black things just can't seem to flip that switch to producing value... they look for the angle, how they can parse the terms to their advantage and claim ignorance, and they cannot get out of "lawyer-think." You'll have a hard time convincing them they did anything wrong. As for calling out their competitors, I actually don't have a problem with that. They're going to be under a microscope from now on and will otherwise be at a disadvantage. Their only reasonable course is to try to level the playing field. Anyway, forgive the rant. I find these types of tactics gross and I'm glad they're getting penalized.
shawnz 13y ago
This is a pretty half-hearted apology. All that has been proven here is that they knew exactly what they were doing the whole time. Additionally, I think they are doing themselves a disservice by comparing themselves to websites like AZLyrics, Metrolyrics etc, because those sites are not even in the same league as RapGenius in terms of quality of content, and it does not serve to justify their actions anyway. Disclaimer: I use RapGenius every day and will continue to do so, unless they continue down this Metrolyrics-esque road.
yeukhon 13y ago
Can someone actually explain or try to convince me why paid links are bad? What about non-paid SEO links? I am not familiar with the arguments. Say I am running a blog and I am asking my friends to include my blog link in everyone one of his links regardless what. And we are just doing this to get each other noticed. Say he's writing a C++ tutorial and I will also cook up a Python equivalent and say "hey guys if you want to check out the Python one, go check out my friend's blog here." It's almost like me asking someone to promote my Youtube Channel (hey guys please subscribe X's new channel) in the video and in description.
- mbesto 13y ago
  This: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- revelation 13y ago
  Your scenario isn't exactly what happened here. Rather, how would you feel if your friend asked you to link 10 Justin Bieber songs in your Python tutorial?
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    But two site owners decided that they can benefit each other if they provide links to each other's site. As I said, I am asking my friend to link my Python's and I link his C++. I can treat him a lunch when I get some ad revenue later. Or just a bro hug. I understand it may not actually be showing what is happening here, but there is some gray area I want to explore. I can also be a celebrity and every week I feature a couple links showing what my friends and my other celebrity friends are doing or writing or making. I may or may not get $$. Maybe just to be friendly (think Youtube, how channel owners help other owners...) Will that violate Google's ToS? I am famous and so helping a few people out shouldn't hurt, right?
ripberge 13y ago
I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get significant organic Google traffic. The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance. Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too. I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people. Google, your system is totally broken.
- diydsp 13y ago
  As massive as it is, I can see Google's needs moving more towards the mainstream. Finding results beyond the first page will fall to other search mechanisms as their inertia develops into a... character. For example, it's hard to search for certain medical information because of so many pop songs clouding out results for "how the heart beats," etc. There will be more and more aliasing and hacking through keywords to distinguish between pop uses of heart and medical uses of heart until eventually people will learn which search mechanism to use for what purpose. Google will most likely ride the mainstream into the sunset, the Sears of our generation.
- davemel37 13y ago
  Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius. There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem. The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.
mbesto 13y ago
As someone who has a client of mine who's been wrongly affected by Google's search update recently (because of inadvertent toxic backlinks), I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
gmisra 13y ago
This is complicated. 1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective. 2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play. 3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions. As they say, the game is the game.
- jlebron2 13y ago
  I have to agree that rapgenius has a great product but their "juvenile and occasionally offensive" demeanor tends to overshadow this. Would love to see them turn their image around but I'm not sure how likely that is. I've always wondered if that is a front they put on to relate to their user base. But then again I love rapgenius and I don't see it as being effective at all. [EDIT] grammar
  - victorhooi 13y ago
    I suspect it is a front. I don't know much about them, but I did see this video from earlier this year, where they don't seem to be "in character": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvrWdfEUHg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvrWdfEUHg You compare that to some of their others, and you get the impression they're smart (if a little weird).
  - yogo 13y ago
    It definitely comes off as a front. That's ironic because a lot of rap/hip hop is all about "I'm the real thing with the money, cars, women, etc. and the others are fake" lol.
georgemcbay 13y ago
I'm kind of disappointed that it didn't start with "Yoo waddup Googz!"
- lfender6445 13y ago
  That is hsyterical! I suppose this is the kind of behavior everyone is up in arms about as being obnoxious or unprofessional but I love it. Who cares how the guys act, they made a a great product that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject. That's a lot more than most of the users here can say.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    "that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject." Not anymore now that Google brought the ranking hammer down on them.
scottrblock 13y ago
No. This is a lie. Let's compare their original email [0] to their apology. While we're at it, let's look at their logical fallacies. For example, compare Rap Genius’ (RG's) annotated edition of Justin Bieber's new hit single "Heartbreaker" – which dozens of Bieber fans have annotated with details of his break up with Selena Gomez – to AZLyrics’ version of the same This is a false clause [1]. Nobody is doubting RG's content is superior. If anything, better content would be a reason not to engage in blackhat SEO. Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking We don’t do this. That is, links shared on Twitter may give temporary traffic to fan sites, but not long-term link juice. Yet, in your email to bloggers, you promised to get you MASSIVE traffic Well which one is it, temporary traffic or massive traffic? This is a direct contradiction. With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors: Again, lyrics sites or shady. They also don't raise VC money from Andreessen Horowitz. You'll be held to a higher standard, and rightfully so, if you're truly hoping to become more than a lyrics site. This is bandwagon fallacy [2]. [0]- http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed [1]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause [2]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon
mrbill 13y ago
The "but.. but.. look at what these other sites are doing!" stuff just comes across as bad and childish.
joelrunyon 13y ago
I really want to like rap genius but I have a few basic beefs: 1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes. 2. The "click" to translate" thing is really annoying & tough to read the full song. I feel like a side by side annotation would work better. 3. It's not as clean as other lyrics sites. Sure other ones are spammy - but they give me exactly what I'm looking for. From a conceptual side of things - I really like what Rap Genius is trying to do. However, the little things like the ones I mentioned above make me looking for other alternatives.
- systematical 13y ago
  Yeah I noted in a comment how terrible the UI is. It's garbage really.
Axsuul 13y ago
Heh, the links to their competitor sites are dofollow.
undoware 13y ago
It's the same as when SourceForge started doing drive-by installs, and the cure is the same: Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
ErikAugust 13y ago
While I am a fan of the RapGenius product, can all the superfluous crap just go away? If I was investing in RG or advising them, I'd tell them to put a muzzle on it. They have a good product, stop screwing it up.
- mikeg8 13y ago
  That would probably be the best advice they could ever receive. Never used the product but after watching a couple of the founders speak, seeing an email they send, and then reading this "apology", I would never use RG.
justinbeaver 13y ago
The chart at the bottom is the most interesting part of this blog post. Rap Genius has raised $15M from a group of premier investors including Andreesen Horowitz and yet their comps (according to Rap Genius, themselves!) are a bunch of black hat, spammy link farms containing music lyrics.
- seiji 13y ago
  Growth at all costs. Concepts of "right" or "moral" don't exist. Only money exists. They're above the rules. They have insider connections. Untouchable, yo.
ErikAugust 13y ago
"With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:" I thought snitching wasn't cool in the hip hop community?
- nivla 13y ago
  Ya that seemed really unprofessional. It goes the way of nasty politics. Not matter how screwed up your competitors are, its a cheapshot to point it out, especially in a message trying to justify your own evil doings.
  - mikeg8 13y ago
    Well said
- rbobby 13y ago
  RatGenius
eric970 13y ago
I love how at the end, they're all like "hey, our competitors do it too!"
dpweb 13y ago
Apology/excuses strategy is the worst, can't even stomach reading their whole post.
- mikeg8 13y ago
  completely agreed.
onedev 13y ago
So I think there is a key takeaway for the RapGenius guys here, and it has nothing to do with Google, SEO, or their tactics. The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (which is perceived to be negative) and that then affects people's opinions about whether they support or don't support RapGenius in this matter. In short; quit being douchebags, it's not helping your case, your site, or your relationship with the community. All publicity is not good publicity.
- Throwadev 13y ago
  I agree that these guys are huge tools. Sad thing is the majority of their uses probably don't fall within the tech community, so their negative image within tech won't really hurt them. Most people who use their site won't ever know who the founders are. The VC's backing them don't care if they are insufferable, they just want that money. Traffic = money, if they can generate the traffic, they get funding.
- seiji 13y ago
  All publicity is not good publicity. Nope. Companies being in the news at all for any non-person-harming event is good. It's like display advertising to reinforce name recognition. The name of the company is "rapgenius." They have a huge ambition, but they don't see how limited they are. Example: There's a radio station in Atlanta whose tagline is "All the hits, with none of the rap." (read: "none of that black music") They aren't a general purpose site. They are a rowdy manipulative bunch who are being stochastically abrasive in the hopes of finding a large enough group of people to like them. Call it Lean Marketing: be loud and insulting as often as possible until you find enough of an exploitable niche where you fit in. (Turns out their first exploitable niche of "annotated rap lyrics" wasn't nearly big enough. They need more rubes to exploit now.)
- newnewnew 13y ago
  "Son do you know why I'm stopping you fo?" Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo? http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics
Throwadev 13y ago
#3: "3) Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links We don’t do this." That is a flat out lie. Maybe it wasn't large scale, but this is exactly what they were doing by asking people to put the links back to their site to try to rank for Bieber lyrics.
rch 13y ago
Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but this all seems like the fox-post-journal-fox loop to me. They are providing commentary on a controversy created by them, about them, revolving around link traffic. It should generate some 'news' content for their site, that is also about their site. They've even managed to work in a blog post about Google's TOS and how not to violate them that some people should probably read. I'd expect it to add up to a traffic bump.
pathdependent 13y ago
This just got more interesting. I certainly found what they did distasteful. Their non-apology makes me lose tremendous respect for a company whose product I sincerely like and frequently use. As other people mentioned, they come off as whiny children -- "but Sally did it first!" At the same time, I recognize that they might have just pulled off something really smart. If they had came out and said, "hey, Google, you should do something about our competition, they cheat" as a blog post, it might have got some attention but most people would write it off as "yea, who doesn't use SEO." Instead, they generated a publicity storm; provoked Google; then, pointed out that, to be consistent, everybody should be punished according to the severity of the offenses. RapGenius being the least severe offender comes out on top, and they still have the best product. I am more inclined to believe they just fucked up than they actually thought about things from this game-theoretic perspective. Misquoting Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to genius that which can be adequately be explained by luck." Moreover, I don't know how much the loss of my respect and that of people like me will cost them, but as a startup it could be expensive. Regardless, this has been fascinating to watch.
- angryasian 13y ago
  they offered no proof and used a lame excuse for justification.
antr 13y ago
RapGenius != Lyrics site Lyrics site != text annotation site Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO != apology If an internet user searches for "Coldplay Yellow lyrics" he/she should be provided with a lyrics website (e.g. AZLyrics) by the search engine. If I search for "Coldplay Yellow annotations" I would like to go to an annotations website like RapGenius. That's what I expect from Google. If RapGenius wants to grow on the back of a the lyrics searches with dodgy SEO tactics, and wants to win both on the lyrics and annotations SERP they will not be providing users with what they want.
- wetmore 13y ago
  RapGenius is certainly a lyrics site. Why should the user be brought to AZLyrics when RapGenius provides the same content (lyrics) as well as annotations?
  - yelnatz 13y ago
    They are a lyrics site, yes. But the whole idea and vision of RapGenius (and why their investors bit) was because of their goal of "annotating the whole internet." They don't want to be just a lyrics site, they want their annotating paradigm to be the norm with every web page you go to. Unfortunately, for now, they are just a lyrics site... with annotations.
jrochkind1 13y ago
man, these guys really like their open letters, their sense of entitlement, and their not knowing what they're doing.
westi 13y ago
While they are fixing the bad SEO they should fix the spam too :) e.g. http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marria...
jrochkind1 13y ago
> is to find blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy and ask them to link pages on Rap Genius that are relevant to their posts. So, this is just a lie, right? The original thing on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658] makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy'. So they're just plain lying, right? [I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]
radicalbyte 13y ago
To go off on a slight tangent: WTF have they done to their links? They open crappy preview windows, totally breaking the UX in the process?
- smackfu 13y ago
  They aren't really links. They are annotations that include a link. This makes more sense in the context of the rest of the site, where any random word in lyrics may be annotated, and you don't really want to click on a word and be sent to a site instead of seeing a popup that explains what that lyric means.
- cdelsolar 13y ago
  you don't know what Rap Genius does, huh?
  - radicalbyte 13y ago
    Ahhh, a Bieber fansite. That explains it :)
- minimaxir 13y ago
  SEO is more important than UX, apparently/unfortunately.
octatone2 13y ago
The chart at the end needs a key, I have no idea what I am looking at. Should be on http://wtfviz.net/ http://wtfviz.net/
- elwell 13y ago
  If you click on it an annotation will appear (albeit, below the margin; scroll down).
chasing 13y ago
Well, unlike every other communiqué of theirs, this doesn't at all sound like it was penned by J-Roc of "Trailer Park Boys." They must've been hacked.
loceng 13y ago
Anyone else notice the magic (black) hat they used in their matrix? :P
stephenitis 13y ago
I as a developer can appreciate the relatively quick response and post caughtya transparency.
jrockway 13y ago
I would probably not write my open letter to a US-based company in the middle of one of the biggest holidays of the year.
Destitute 13y ago
For some reason, the "Wahhhh, but they do it toooOoooOo" is what I would expect from these three.
andrewhillman 13y ago
I guess they wont be launching SEOgenius.com anytime soon. All jokes aside, these kinds of actions are the result of pressure to get big fast. You can complain about what these competitor lyric sites are doing, but the truth is that some of these guys are the true growth hackers. They actually employ 1-2 elements that are 100% white-hat and I am positive it helps them achieve great rankings... aside for being around longer. It's not obvious but they have implemented some smart SEO strategies. But here's the thing... They learned these strategies by understanding how random users use their service. Nothing wrong with this. Perhaps, rapgenius should look a little closer and interact with competitor sites if they are frustrated with the competition.
systematical 13y ago
I actually think there site sucks. Like really bad. The idea is great, but frankly I could develop a better UI in less than a month. I'm not saying this to tout myself, I'm saying this because the UI is that bad. Seriously, it looks like something I would have created in my first 2 years of programming.
jarnix 13y ago
Maybe you should fix your links in your letter. They all point to news.rg.com that does not display your CSS.
gscott 13y ago
Google's policies are counter-intuitive to how the World Wide Web was designed. You are supposed to link to other sites that you like and you want them to link to you as well. Google's policies lead to a non-linking which means that Google does all of the associating in their database to find which sites are like each other and should be grouped together, which pushes out development of new search engines because there will not be a link profile for other engines to use, thereby furthering Google's monopoly.
icedchai 13y ago
Rap Genius is how I know we're in a tech bubble.
mcgwiz 13y ago
They make no mention of asking the unnatural link publishers to take the links down (such links can be found in Google Webmaster Tools), or of using the Disavow Links tool to tell Google they do not want anything to do with those links. Lessons learned: Better to be safe than sorry. Know your tools. Know your partners.
ysekand 13y ago
I just published a short post with some data http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius
vtempest 13y ago
I AM TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT RAPGENIUS Even more so than hearing about Kanye Wests latest antics
duked 13y ago
". We believe that any unbiased user would prefer the Rap Genius version over the alternatives " I'm actually unbiased and prefer the alternative. When I'm looking for lyrics I just want lyrics and couldn't care less about the annotation. I'm not saying I'm the norm but saying the "norm" would always go for RapGenius is not fair, at least in my case.
null_ptr 13y ago
Why do all their URLs end with "-lyrics"? Because they're SEO spammers that's why.
jaredmck 13y ago
Outing all your competition is extremely lame, stop snitching.

148 points by iball 13y ago

lemming 13y ago

I notice that they are actually capable of writing English like a normal person when it benefits them.

mwcurry 13y ago

Can anyone post the original controversy? The letter mentions it but doesn't link to it.

jlebron2 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658
- julespitt 13y ago
  Jinx!
julespitt 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658
- Destitute 13y ago
  I've never read anything more douchey in my life. Are they trying to appeal to the "hip-hop" crowd with the feigned street talk?

ryes 13y ago

These guys knew exactly what they were doing. Nice fake pr apology trying to trick your users into thinking you are clean. Example of anyone can get addicted to bad tactics and $ coming in. But you need to remember to not get a lot of PR and do grey tactics at the same time.

drsim 13y ago

Oh dear. The schoolkid gets caught and says 'yeah, but Jim did such and such that's worse'.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

keltex 13y ago

These are just paid links. It falls under the category "exchanging goods or services for links". The "service" is a tweet or post on facebook. You can report them to Google here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks

milkshakes 13y ago

what a joke of a non-apology. i hope the search quality team makes an example out of them.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

Well played. The Bieber song linked in the first paragraph is the one they wanted pushed in the first place to get their page rank up. Looks like an apology but is a huge SEO push.

thefallsman 13y ago
Interesting point, write a controversial article, get love link love then link out to your money page (ranking lyrics for Bieber must be a goldmine...)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
joelrunyon 13y ago
Pushing traffic to both the Bieber page & the Beyonce page. Both HUGE numbers of search terms. Interestingly enough - they weren't very specific about getting penalized and/or when it happened.
onedev 13y ago
This is hilarious. They thought no one would notice. I have no opinion on any of this but I found this detail amusingly ironic.

davemel37 13y ago

This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.) Furthermore, while links in twitter might not pass link juice they most certainly influence search rankings, whether its personalized search, or actual algorithms that take into consideration social signals. The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant? You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?

Goopplesoft 13y ago
Very childish indeed, it was not an apology at all but a 'they're doing it too' kind of post. I've seen this type of childish behavior on a couple occasions with them (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo )... I'm quite surprised they decided take this approach. Edit: mirror, since I'm betting the text will be modified soon considering the reactions here. http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp
- look_lookatme 13y ago
  Childishness seems ingrained in this company's DNA.
  - strathmeyer 13y ago
    Who, HackerNews'?? It's always so funny when people insult someone and assume the rest of us will know what they are talking about instead of assuming your comments apply to yourself.

thefallsman 13y ago

This seems like a good SEO method - point out that you were doing something extremely minor in violation of Google's guidelines, then point out that everyone else breaks most of the guidelines. All the same time do this in a niche that is known for spam, all the while hoping that Google will read it and manually slap everyone else, giving you a better overall ranking.

rralian 13y ago
What they did doesn't seem "extremely minor" to me. It's about as textbook as you can get as an example of something that will piss off google. Reminds me of all the grey/black methods "facebook apps" (remember them?) would use to trick people into spamming their friends with invites. In my experience, this stuff can work in the short-run of maybe two or three years... and maybe that's all that a lot of startups really care about... flipping a company in a couple years. But if you want to build a lasting business (not sure that's the goal of RapGenius), you build a service that provides real value to people that they gladly talk about to their friends. And you approach SEO by providing interesting, fresh, rich, easily-indexable, accessible content. Not by seeding thousands of Bieber links back to your site. In my experience the people who do these grey/black things just can't seem to flip that switch to producing value... they look for the angle, how they can parse the terms to their advantage and claim ignorance, and they cannot get out of "lawyer-think." You'll have a hard time convincing them they did anything wrong. As for calling out their competitors, I actually don't have a problem with that. They're going to be under a microscope from now on and will otherwise be at a disadvantage. Their only reasonable course is to try to level the playing field. Anyway, forgive the rant. I find these types of tactics gross and I'm glad they're getting penalized.

shawnz 13y ago

This is a pretty half-hearted apology. All that has been proven here is that they knew exactly what they were doing the whole time. Additionally, I think they are doing themselves a disservice by comparing themselves to websites like AZLyrics, Metrolyrics etc, because those sites are not even in the same league as RapGenius in terms of quality of content, and it does not serve to justify their actions anyway. Disclaimer: I use RapGenius every day and will continue to do so, unless they continue down this Metrolyrics-esque road.

yeukhon 13y ago

Can someone actually explain or try to convince me why paid links are bad? What about non-paid SEO links? I am not familiar with the arguments. Say I am running a blog and I am asking my friends to include my blog link in everyone one of his links regardless what. And we are just doing this to get each other noticed. Say he's writing a C++ tutorial and I will also cook up a Python equivalent and say "hey guys if you want to check out the Python one, go check out my friend's blog here." It's almost like me asking someone to promote my Youtube Channel (hey guys please subscribe X's new channel) in the video and in description.

mbesto 13y ago
This: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
revelation 13y ago
Your scenario isn't exactly what happened here. Rather, how would you feel if your friend asked you to link 10 Justin Bieber songs in your Python tutorial?
- yeukhon 13y ago
  But two site owners decided that they can benefit each other if they provide links to each other's site. As I said, I am asking my friend to link my Python's and I link his C++. I can treat him a lunch when I get some ad revenue later. Or just a bro hug. I understand it may not actually be showing what is happening here, but there is some gray area I want to explore. I can also be a celebrity and every week I feature a couple links showing what my friends and my other celebrity friends are doing or writing or making. I may or may not get $$. Maybe just to be friendly (think Youtube, how channel owners help other owners...) Will that violate Google's ToS? I am famous and so helping a few people out shouldn't hurt, right?

ripberge 13y ago

I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get significant organic Google traffic. The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance. Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too. I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people. Google, your system is totally broken.

diydsp 13y ago
As massive as it is, I can see Google's needs moving more towards the mainstream. Finding results beyond the first page will fall to other search mechanisms as their inertia develops into a... character. For example, it's hard to search for certain medical information because of so many pop songs clouding out results for "how the heart beats," etc. There will be more and more aliasing and hacking through keywords to distinguish between pop uses of heart and medical uses of heart until eventually people will learn which search mechanism to use for what purpose. Google will most likely ride the mainstream into the sunset, the Sears of our generation.
davemel37 13y ago
Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius. There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem. The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.

mbesto 13y ago

As someone who has a client of mine who's been wrongly affected by Google's search update recently (because of inadvertent toxic backlinks), I have absolutely no sympathy for them.

gmisra 13y ago

This is complicated. 1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective. 2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play. 3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions. As they say, the game is the game.

jlebron2 13y ago
I have to agree that rapgenius has a great product but their "juvenile and occasionally offensive" demeanor tends to overshadow this. Would love to see them turn their image around but I'm not sure how likely that is. I've always wondered if that is a front they put on to relate to their user base. But then again I love rapgenius and I don't see it as being effective at all. [EDIT] grammar
- victorhooi 13y ago
  I suspect it is a front. I don't know much about them, but I did see this video from earlier this year, where they don't seem to be "in character": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvrWdfEUHg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvrWdfEUHg You compare that to some of their others, and you get the impression they're smart (if a little weird).
- yogo 13y ago
  It definitely comes off as a front. That's ironic because a lot of rap/hip hop is all about "I'm the real thing with the money, cars, women, etc. and the others are fake" lol.

georgemcbay 13y ago

I'm kind of disappointed that it didn't start with "Yoo waddup Googz!"

lfender6445 13y ago
That is hsyterical! I suppose this is the kind of behavior everyone is up in arms about as being obnoxious or unprofessional but I love it. Who cares how the guys act, they made a a great product that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject. That's a lot more than most of the users here can say.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  "that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject." Not anymore now that Google brought the ranking hammer down on them.

scottrblock 13y ago

No. This is a lie. Let's compare their original email [0] to their apology. While we're at it, let's look at their logical fallacies. For example, compare Rap Genius’ (RG's) annotated edition of Justin Bieber's new hit single "Heartbreaker" – which dozens of Bieber fans have annotated with details of his break up with Selena Gomez – to AZLyrics’ version of the same This is a false clause [1]. Nobody is doubting RG's content is superior. If anything, better content would be a reason not to engage in blackhat SEO. Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking We don’t do this. That is, links shared on Twitter may give temporary traffic to fan sites, but not long-term link juice. Yet, in your email to bloggers, you promised to get you MASSIVE traffic Well which one is it, temporary traffic or massive traffic? This is a direct contradiction. With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors: Again, lyrics sites or shady. They also don't raise VC money from Andreessen Horowitz. You'll be held to a higher standard, and rightfully so, if you're truly hoping to become more than a lyrics site. This is bandwagon fallacy [2]. [0]- http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed [1]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause [2]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon

mrbill 13y ago

The "but.. but.. look at what these other sites are doing!" stuff just comes across as bad and childish.

joelrunyon 13y ago

I really want to like rap genius but I have a few basic beefs: 1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes. 2. The "click" to translate" thing is really annoying & tough to read the full song. I feel like a side by side annotation would work better. 3. It's not as clean as other lyrics sites. Sure other ones are spammy - but they give me exactly what I'm looking for. From a conceptual side of things - I really like what Rap Genius is trying to do. However, the little things like the ones I mentioned above make me looking for other alternatives.

systematical 13y ago
Yeah I noted in a comment how terrible the UI is. It's garbage really.

Axsuul 13y ago

Heh, the links to their competitor sites are dofollow.

undoware 13y ago

It's the same as when SourceForge started doing drive-by installs, and the cure is the same: Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

ErikAugust 13y ago

While I am a fan of the RapGenius product, can all the superfluous crap just go away? If I was investing in RG or advising them, I'd tell them to put a muzzle on it. They have a good product, stop screwing it up.

mikeg8 13y ago
That would probably be the best advice they could ever receive. Never used the product but after watching a couple of the founders speak, seeing an email they send, and then reading this "apology", I would never use RG.

justinbeaver 13y ago

The chart at the bottom is the most interesting part of this blog post. Rap Genius has raised $15M from a group of premier investors including Andreesen Horowitz and yet their comps (according to Rap Genius, themselves!) are a bunch of black hat, spammy link farms containing music lyrics.

seiji 13y ago
Growth at all costs. Concepts of "right" or "moral" don't exist. Only money exists. They're above the rules. They have insider connections. Untouchable, yo.

ErikAugust 13y ago

"With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:" I thought snitching wasn't cool in the hip hop community?

nivla 13y ago
Ya that seemed really unprofessional. It goes the way of nasty politics. Not matter how screwed up your competitors are, its a cheapshot to point it out, especially in a message trying to justify your own evil doings.
- mikeg8 13y ago
  Well said
rbobby 13y ago
RatGenius

eric970 13y ago

I love how at the end, they're all like "hey, our competitors do it too!"

dpweb 13y ago

Apology/excuses strategy is the worst, can't even stomach reading their whole post.

mikeg8 13y ago
completely agreed.

onedev 13y ago

So I think there is a key takeaway for the RapGenius guys here, and it has nothing to do with Google, SEO, or their tactics. The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (which is perceived to be negative) and that then affects people's opinions about whether they support or don't support RapGenius in this matter. In short; quit being douchebags, it's not helping your case, your site, or your relationship with the community. All publicity is not good publicity.

Throwadev 13y ago
I agree that these guys are huge tools. Sad thing is the majority of their uses probably don't fall within the tech community, so their negative image within tech won't really hurt them. Most people who use their site won't ever know who the founders are. The VC's backing them don't care if they are insufferable, they just want that money. Traffic = money, if they can generate the traffic, they get funding.
seiji 13y ago
All publicity is not good publicity. Nope. Companies being in the news at all for any non-person-harming event is good. It's like display advertising to reinforce name recognition. The name of the company is "rapgenius." They have a huge ambition, but they don't see how limited they are. Example: There's a radio station in Atlanta whose tagline is "All the hits, with none of the rap." (read: "none of that black music") They aren't a general purpose site. They are a rowdy manipulative bunch who are being stochastically abrasive in the hopes of finding a large enough group of people to like them. Call it Lean Marketing: be loud and insulting as often as possible until you find enough of an exploitable niche where you fit in. (Turns out their first exploitable niche of "annotated rap lyrics" wasn't nearly big enough. They need more rubes to exploit now.)
newnewnew 13y ago
"Son do you know why I'm stopping you fo?" Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo? http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics

Throwadev 13y ago

#3: "3) Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links We don’t do this." That is a flat out lie. Maybe it wasn't large scale, but this is exactly what they were doing by asking people to put the links back to their site to try to rank for Bieber lyrics.

rch 13y ago

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but this all seems like the fox-post-journal-fox loop to me. They are providing commentary on a controversy created by them, about them, revolving around link traffic. It should generate some 'news' content for their site, that is also about their site. They've even managed to work in a blog post about Google's TOS and how not to violate them that some people should probably read. I'd expect it to add up to a traffic bump.

pathdependent 13y ago

This just got more interesting. I certainly found what they did distasteful. Their non-apology makes me lose tremendous respect for a company whose product I sincerely like and frequently use. As other people mentioned, they come off as whiny children -- "but Sally did it first!" At the same time, I recognize that they might have just pulled off something really smart. If they had came out and said, "hey, Google, you should do something about our competition, they cheat" as a blog post, it might have got some attention but most people would write it off as "yea, who doesn't use SEO." Instead, they generated a publicity storm; provoked Google; then, pointed out that, to be consistent, everybody should be punished according to the severity of the offenses. RapGenius being the least severe offender comes out on top, and they still have the best product. I am more inclined to believe they just fucked up than they actually thought about things from this game-theoretic perspective. Misquoting Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to genius that which can be adequately be explained by luck." Moreover, I don't know how much the loss of my respect and that of people like me will cost them, but as a startup it could be expensive. Regardless, this has been fascinating to watch.

angryasian 13y ago
they offered no proof and used a lame excuse for justification.

antr 13y ago

RapGenius != Lyrics site Lyrics site != text annotation site Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO != apology If an internet user searches for "Coldplay Yellow lyrics" he/she should be provided with a lyrics website (e.g. AZLyrics) by the search engine. If I search for "Coldplay Yellow annotations" I would like to go to an annotations website like RapGenius. That's what I expect from Google. If RapGenius wants to grow on the back of a the lyrics searches with dodgy SEO tactics, and wants to win both on the lyrics and annotations SERP they will not be providing users with what they want.

wetmore 13y ago
RapGenius is certainly a lyrics site. Why should the user be brought to AZLyrics when RapGenius provides the same content (lyrics) as well as annotations?
- yelnatz 13y ago
  They are a lyrics site, yes. But the whole idea and vision of RapGenius (and why their investors bit) was because of their goal of "annotating the whole internet." They don't want to be just a lyrics site, they want their annotating paradigm to be the norm with every web page you go to. Unfortunately, for now, they are just a lyrics site... with annotations.

jrochkind1 13y ago

man, these guys really like their open letters, their sense of entitlement, and their not knowing what they're doing.

westi 13y ago

While they are fixing the bad SEO they should fix the spam too :) e.g. http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marria...

jrochkind1 13y ago

> is to find blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy and ask them to link pages on Rap Genius that are relevant to their posts. So, this is just a lie, right? The original thing on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658] makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy'. So they're just plain lying, right? [I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]

radicalbyte 13y ago

To go off on a slight tangent: WTF have they done to their links? They open crappy preview windows, totally breaking the UX in the process?

smackfu 13y ago
They aren't really links. They are annotations that include a link. This makes more sense in the context of the rest of the site, where any random word in lyrics may be annotated, and you don't really want to click on a word and be sent to a site instead of seeing a popup that explains what that lyric means.
cdelsolar 13y ago
you don't know what Rap Genius does, huh?
- radicalbyte 13y ago
  Ahhh, a Bieber fansite. That explains it :)
minimaxir 13y ago
SEO is more important than UX, apparently/unfortunately.

octatone2 13y ago

The chart at the end needs a key, I have no idea what I am looking at. Should be on http://wtfviz.net/ http://wtfviz.net/

elwell 13y ago
If you click on it an annotation will appear (albeit, below the margin; scroll down).

chasing 13y ago

Well, unlike every other communiqué of theirs, this doesn't at all sound like it was penned by J-Roc of "Trailer Park Boys." They must've been hacked.

loceng 13y ago

Anyone else notice the magic (black) hat they used in their matrix? :P

stephenitis 13y ago

I as a developer can appreciate the relatively quick response and post caughtya transparency.

jrockway 13y ago

I would probably not write my open letter to a US-based company in the middle of one of the biggest holidays of the year.

Destitute 13y ago

For some reason, the "Wahhhh, but they do it toooOoooOo" is what I would expect from these three.

andrewhillman 13y ago

I guess they wont be launching SEOgenius.com anytime soon. All jokes aside, these kinds of actions are the result of pressure to get big fast. You can complain about what these competitor lyric sites are doing, but the truth is that some of these guys are the true growth hackers. They actually employ 1-2 elements that are 100% white-hat and I am positive it helps them achieve great rankings... aside for being around longer. It's not obvious but they have implemented some smart SEO strategies. But here's the thing... They learned these strategies by understanding how random users use their service. Nothing wrong with this. Perhaps, rapgenius should look a little closer and interact with competitor sites if they are frustrated with the competition.

systematical 13y ago

I actually think there site sucks. Like really bad. The idea is great, but frankly I could develop a better UI in less than a month. I'm not saying this to tout myself, I'm saying this because the UI is that bad. Seriously, it looks like something I would have created in my first 2 years of programming.

jarnix 13y ago

Maybe you should fix your links in your letter. They all point to news.rg.com that does not display your CSS.

gscott 13y ago

Google's policies are counter-intuitive to how the World Wide Web was designed. You are supposed to link to other sites that you like and you want them to link to you as well. Google's policies lead to a non-linking which means that Google does all of the associating in their database to find which sites are like each other and should be grouped together, which pushes out development of new search engines because there will not be a link profile for other engines to use, thereby furthering Google's monopoly.

icedchai 13y ago

Rap Genius is how I know we're in a tech bubble.

mcgwiz 13y ago

They make no mention of asking the unnatural link publishers to take the links down (such links can be found in Google Webmaster Tools), or of using the Disavow Links tool to tell Google they do not want anything to do with those links. Lessons learned: Better to be safe than sorry. Know your tools. Know your partners.

ysekand 13y ago

I just published a short post with some data http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius

vtempest 13y ago

I AM TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT RAPGENIUS Even more so than hearing about Kanye Wests latest antics

duked 13y ago

". We believe that any unbiased user would prefer the Rap Genius version over the alternatives " I'm actually unbiased and prefer the alternative. When I'm looking for lyrics I just want lyrics and couldn't care less about the annotation. I'm not saying I'm the norm but saying the "norm" would always go for RapGenius is not fair, at least in my case.

null_ptr 13y ago

Why do all their URLs end with "-lyrics"? Because they're SEO spammers that's why.

jaredmck 13y ago

Outing all your competition is extremely lame, stop snitching.