6 ms·
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 faul
by 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 agoVery 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 agoChildishness seems ingrained in this company's DNA.
- strathmeyer 13y agoWho, 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.
- PaulHoule 13y agoI voted for this in the new q becuz I wanted them to get burned
- jimsilverman 13y agoa textbook examples of the dreaded "bro-grammer"
- sheetjs 13y ago> 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? When you know your competition is playing dirty, you can join them or choose to rise above. There are legitimate arguments for both. They chose to play dirty, and I wouldn't be surprised if this weakened their position in the long term
- davemel37 13y agoThere's always a choice, but in this case... They chose WRONG. Their strategy most likely wouldnt even work if they didnt get caught. lots of exact match anchor text links around content that is completely irrelevant at the bottom of a blog post, without social sharing matching their backlink profile. (yes, search engines can look at your social sharing pattern with your backlinks and see if something is getting artificial backlinks.) They chose the short long way... They should have chosen the long short way.
- ripberge 13y agoYou are very misinformed if you think these strategies do not work. They are a necessity for a startup in very high competition niches. Take a look at the source of the very reputable: www.usatoday.com/sports/ and search for "NFL Tickets". Blatant link buying by vivid seats. SeatGeek does this all over the place as well. When you have really strong competitors buying links like this and getting away with it--it's the only way to compete. In my experience Google has never penalized a competitor for doing this in my niche, therefore to compete I have to do it as well. What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent compared to a lot of what is going on out there.
- antr 13y agoAlthough I don't agree that "What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent", I do have to agree on the general (black) SEO tactics that startups do, and even blue chips do. This is my first hand experience: I was contacted by an "SEO Consultant" who wanted to publish an article in one my sites for $40. I went along, exchanged a few emails, and managed to get the "article" this company wanted to publish. Bottom line was that they wanted to place link's to Tesco's LED bulbs site: Text: decorative and useful living room accessory URL: http://www.tesco.com/direct/home-garden/lighting/cat3376614.cat
- pkfrank 13y agoIs there a legitimate way to "tattle" on competitors that are blatantly abusing SEO practices?
- ripberge 13y agoYou can report them using Google Webmaster tools. I have done this for several sites, but the link buying & ranking within Google continues. The system is broken.
- davemel37 13y agoSure, here is the link. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1
- 13y ago
- seiji 13y agoThis site should be penalized up the wazoo. Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?
- minimaxir 13y agoSince Rap Genius is a YC company, that is unlikely. This also isn't the first time a YC company has had ethical issues called out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711
- seiji 13y agoDoes anybody else see the folly in letting a corporation with their own agenda run a real time news site?
- minimaxir 13y agoIn fairness, the articles submitted from the domain rapgenius.com are appropriate for HN. (e.g. the Heroku incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215884 ) They aren't using HN to submit content spam. (fwiw, there was another YC startup in a similar niche doing just that earlier this year. That startup appears to be dead/zombie now.)
- buttsex 13y agoEh, as long as HN doesn't censor bad press on its startups (I don't know, maybe they do?) I'm fine with it.
- jbigelow76 13y agoDoes anyone else see the folly in patronizing a news site if you think the news reported is untrustworthy?
- jamesaguilar 13y agoWhat do you mean, "Letting a corporation run...?" You don't "let" someone run a site they created.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pvnick 13y agoYou would have them be "penalized up the wazoo" because they didn't apologize in the way you would have preferred? Talk about being unreasonably punitive. I would hope that making an example out of somebody is not a formal strategy in search engine ranking. Instead, be rational and penalize them in proportion to the degree to which they cheat, just like everyone else.
- davemel37 13y agoNo, I would penalize them for building spammy backlinks the same way Google penalized their own chrome site. The apology seems to indicate that they only think they did something grayhatish. In reality it was the worst kind of link spam...buying links.
- obstacle1 13y agoI didn't see any inference from OP that because of this apology the site should be penalized. Perhaps OP thinks that the extremely shady spam tactics the site clearly uses in themselves deserve penalization up the wazoo.
- newnewnew 13y agoIn other words, schadenfreude > public good