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Rap Genius Traffic Has Dropped By Over 80%
- Soviet 13y agoWhy?
- leoplct 13y agoit's ridiculous! Google cannot do this!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ehPReth 13y agoWhy not? Rap Genius ignored Google's rules
- primitivesuave 13y agoGoogle can, and Google will.
- msutherl 13y agoIt's ridiculous because breaking the rules and not getting caught is the only way to win the game.
- wickedOne 13y agoironically google trends shows a massive increase in interest http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius.com http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius.com
- dasmithii 13y agoThis reminds me of the Miley Cirus insanity of past months. She gained more popularity than ever before by acting erotic and capitalizing on peoples' disgust. People were promoting her name in insults and jokes around the world. Here, the term "Rap Genius" is being popularized by controversy.
- wickedOne 13y ago"there is no such thing as bad publicity…" would be really interesting to see their analytics data / wonder that will be down 80% as well
- dasmithii 13y agoUnfortunately, that quote applies far to often. I'm hesitant to comment on threads like this for the same reason; I don't want to encourage such behavior with my attention
- LammyL 13y agoIs the search interest attributed to people wanting to see how low rap genius is ranked now on google, or people who actually want to visit the rap genius site? I suspect it is the former.
- jakub_g 13y agoHonestly I never heard about rapgenius before and never seen it in top 3 in google when searching for lyrics (using google from Europe, logged out). Almost always azlyrics is the top match for me.
- iancarroll 13y agoHas Google specified when the penalty will end?
- nostromo 13y agoThis has moved from an interesting case study in SEO to unadulterated schadenfreude.
- arkitaip 13y agoschadenfreude by who? Certainly not by Google or the media.
- tptacek 13y agoBy people who are not fans of Rap Genius, of which there are many. (I like the site, for what it's worth).
- arkitaip 13y agoThere have been some bad comments here for sure but the waste majority has been civilized and reasonable because ultimately black hat seo tears the fabric of web trust apart. Personally, I have nothing against RG but I do expect more from a YC startup.
- 001sky 13y agoRight, but this is a link to a piece of data. Calling it "emotive" is odd.
- tedks 13y agoAll data is emotive. All emotions stem from data. When you look at the Mona Lisa or hear Sun by Koreless (IMO the most beautiful piece of music from 2013) you're processing data. It's just wave oscillations or light refraction.
- 001sky 13y agoNo, data is not per-se emotive. You're confusing (amongst other things) the sub-set data that is aesthtetic, with the complet set of Data, and in vaguely more technical terms making an inference that is invalid.
- beatpanda 13y agoWhich is really a shame, because RapGenius is a better lyrics site than all the rest by leaps and bounds. Google is acting like a cartel here and it's absolutely ridiculous. I hope they can beat this thing.
- dylandrop 13y agoI do think that RapGenius' punishment is pretty harsh, but I don't think Google's behavior is "absolutely ridiculous". RapGenius did some shady stuff and they should be penalized for it so that this stuff doesn't pervade the web. I also don't think Google is acting like a cartel, in that they aren't extorting RapGenius or killing family members. But maybe Google should've laid off the crusade after a week or so.
- rgbrgb 13y agoI mostly agree with you. However, I think the parent comment was referring to the economic sense of "cartel"[1]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
- k-mcgrady 13y agoI haven't that read much about cartels in a long time but Google's behaviour here doesn't seem to fit that of a cartel based on a quick reading of the wikipedia page you provided.
- fragsworth 13y agoThey're using this as a punitive measure to prevent SEO abuse from happening in the future. I don't see much of a problem with it. Google is doing everyone a favor here - including helping out other search engines. Users who care enough can just go directly to the site.
- antr 13y agogoogle already took equal measures with other companies, pretty public all of them. this story is making a lot of noise on the interwebs because its a known startup with well known investors. had it been a random blog no one would be talking about this. google's action is only consistent with what it has done in the past with others.
- michaelrbock 13y agoHmm... "This site reaches over 24 million monthly people, of which 12 million (48%) are in the U.S.The typical visitor watches Nickelodeon, visits pbskids.org, and listens to National Public Radio."
- kunai 13y agoAll I can glean from that is that the typical visitor to RapGenius can't be bothered to set up a separate user account for his/her children. This brings up an important point: hardly anyone knows how to configure or troubleshoot their computer. This is by far a more important point than some arbitrary "learn to code" movement that doesn't teach CS, and does NOT teach programming – it's like giving somebody a hammer and telling them to nail a nail into a board of wood, without teaching them how to build anything with that hammer. Instead, we should be teaching people how to maintain the furniture they already own first. I just have zero respect for Code.org at this point, it's their own agenda they're trying to fulfill. They don't care about the future of the U.S., it's just self-aggrandizement as usual. Sorry for the OT.
- KC8ZKF 13y agoI'm confused. Do you think RapGenius visitors are children or adults?
- kunai 13y agoRapGenius visitors are probably adults or young adults, but the fact that the average "visitor" visits NPR and pbskids is indicative that the visitor has children or siblings, which means that a child and an adult are on the same browser on the same user.
- arrrg 13y agoAnd that is relevant … why, exactly? There often is simply no need at all for separate user accounts on a family computer.
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- jawerty 13y agoI'm not sure if it's right or wrong what Google did, but it was certainly a shit business decision. It's Google's job to be a proper search tool for anyone to get the best possible results when searching something as simple as "rapgenius". If I search "rapgenius" and don't get the hugely popular website http://rapgenius.com http://rapgenius.com as the first result, then that's bad service on Google's end.
- fragsworth 13y ago> but it was certainly a shit business decision Not really, because they're using this kind of punishment to make an example of them in order to prevent future SEO abuse by others. It's probably for the better.
- Destitute 13y agoThe abuse already goes on, and it's much more involved and 1,000% more effective than trading links.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jonknee 13y agoAlmost no one will notice as long as they get their lyrics.
- schrodinger 13y agoConsumers don't have to notice, rap genius and other sites considering similar tactics do.
- asdasga 13y agoAssuming Google can perfectly balance a general purpose and highly complex system like this is naive or just plain disingenuous. The best they can do is penalize them on certain metrics and if that has other side effects, well, too f*cking bad.
- hydralist 13y agowhy is rap genius the best for lyrics? if i want lyrics, i want a simple print out of the lyrics
- unknownian 13y agoPerhaps there is a market for a curl or git based lyrics downloader in the terminal.
- YungLean 13y agoThey have added value in their annotated lyrics, which comes in handy especially with cryptic word play/slang in rap lyrics.
- Destitute 13y agoYou realize any Joe Schmoe can annotate what he personally believes the meaning of a particular lyric is. If you read any Kanye West lyrics on that site, they break down every line like it's some kind of literary divine intervention of pure brilliance by grasping at every straw possible.
- YungLean 13y agoThat's because every Kanye West line literally is a literary divine intervention of pure brilliance, of course. Anyway, there is a verification system in place and you can also discuss the line through a commenting system. I usually find their annotations to be precise and correct.
- chaz 13y agoAgree that's sometimes happens. The site also incentivizes every single word to be explained, which makes for some pretty mundane, very little explanations. But there are times where I just don't get the reference and someone's been kind enough to provide it.
- onetimeonly 13y agoI only ever search for lyrics if I want to understand a nuance I think I'm missing. RapGenius has always been my go-to for that.
- WaterSponge 13y agoDoes this not prove the incentive to win at SEO at all costs? Has google disclosed other sites penalized for the same behavior?
- JohnTHaller 13y agoAll kinds of sites regularly get penalized for this type of behavior.
- dmak 13y agoThere really needs to be some checks and balances here. Perhaps an opensource search engine? I think an entity like Google having so much control over which businesses die or survive is a little ridiculous.
- ouggnay 13y agoDo you have any idea how easy it would be to game an open source search engine?
- camus2 13y agoThe issue is Google has become the only way to discover content on the web. Before Google, there was much more competition or alternative ways to make content discoverable. Now people basically only "google" stuffs up, and that's not going to change. And search capabilities on most websites are provided by Google too ,that's insane and dangerous. Google has become the WEB and if you are not on Google , you dont exist. Google is now an institution thus "too big to fail",and so much for anti-trust laws.
- icebraining 13y agoWe already have an Open Source search engine, it's called YaCy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy Of course, nobody uses it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- baldajan 13y agoWhat I find shocking is a single company (Google) has the power to cause such a dramatic decrease of a website it deemed "unworthy". Sure, it can justify its actions by saying they broke the rules, but pressing the a "death button" for a website is not a solution. I feel as though Google needs to re-examine their core principles and determine how to better handle an issue like this. Otherwise, I suspect Google might have anti-trust and anti-competitive issues and the government might set the rules for them, and we all know how bad that would be.
- olefoo 13y agoUmmm. If Rap Genius had traffic of it's own where people were going to them directly, and google were somehow taking that away from them it might be possible to be sympathetic. But, Rap Genius made a calculated business decision to focus their efforts on getting search traffic and not on building a stable organic foundation to which extra traffic would have been a nice bonus but not the controlling factor in their success. And really, what value does Rap Genius add to lyrics?
- V-2 13y ago> but pressing the a "death button" for a website is not a solution. What is a solution then? It seems like a good deterrent. It has to hurt. In Poland (where I'm from) they similarly punished Ceneo, Skąpiec, Nokaut (all most popular price comparator services) and even Tesco. See http://www.seoportal.pl/ceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-google http://www.seoportal.pl/ceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-go... (Polish) or http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seoportal.pl%2Fceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-google&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre... (English by Google Translate). Not one of these websites has died, but a lesson was taught.
- grey-area 13y agoShould Google have that sort of power over almost every business in the world?
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- jonknee 13y agoAn interesting side effect of this is the phenomenon of less sophisticated users who use Google as their address bar. If you run a decently well-known website you see this in your analytics reports (at least back when you could see Google search keywords)--repeat visitors coming to your site from Google after searching for your site by name. This is why "facebook" is the top Google search. Since you can't find RapGenius by searching for it there is a decent sized audience of people who are under the assumption that RapGenius does not exist anymore. It's bizarre to the HN crowd, but very real. Check out their twitter feed: https://twitter.com/RapGenius https://twitter.com/RapGenius
- Kerrick 13y agoSpecifically, https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/417354178189459456 https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/417354178189459456
- jonknee 13y agoAmong others: https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/417348237222113281 https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/417348237222113281
- thedrbrian 13y agoIt happened slightly differently to Facebook http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_meme http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...
- jameszhang 13y agoMy browser (Chrome) shares screen real estate between its search functionality and address bar. Therefore, if I have searched "facebook" on Google but have not explicitly typed "http://facebook.com" http://facebook.com" into the address bar, Chrome remembers the "facebook" search as I start to type it out. As a user, the next most obvious action to take is to tab-complete + enter, and voila, there goes the Google search for "facebook".
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- devanti 13y agoIf RG thinks they're so great (and all the bandwagoners on HN), then they should prove it by playing fairly. My suspicion is that the vast majority of people who search for lyrics don't care about song meanings or annotations. Azlyrics does just fine, which is why they've always been at the top. If people wanted song meanings they would search for song meanings. My theory is that RG wasn't able to grow as fast as they hoped and have to resort to these methods. How else can RG justify a $15 million investment? Their biggest competitor, songmeanings.com, is bootstrapped with only a couple employees, which shows the true market size of the song meanings / annotations market. Remember that most consumers want things that are insanely simple and give them immediate satisfaction. I'm not surprised that most people on HN think otherwise as they tend to be deeper thinkers than the average consumer.
- wcummings 13y agoI thought annotations were just a way to sidestep paying licensing on the lyrics.
- notastartup 13y agoVery well written. I think if anything, the fact that they are funded and need to produce positive ROI for their investment creates incentive to "grow at all costs". However, the cost has been too great.
- someguyperson 13y agoThe difference between RG and songmeanings, and really any other lyrics website in existence, is the quality of the annotations. My habit of listening to rap has changed quite dramatically since I have discovered RG - I don't have to speculate about what a line might mean, because now there's a whole community of people who love rap collate their collective wisdom and tell you what it means. The verified annotations are also amazing...I mean seriously, what other site has artists themselves explaining what they meant for their own songs? I think the $15 million can be justified if you look at their long-term plans. They've built a model with rap and now they're expanding onto rock, pop and poetry. I see it this way: the sell for RG is for their whole slew of websites to become the wikipedia for literary/artistic interpretation, a position they have already locked down with rap. Whether that is worth $15 million is of course up to you, but it looks like it was worth it to some big name investors.
- pastpartisan 13y agoIt started out as rap genius and now its extending its tentacles to all types of music and even non-music related subjects Eventually, it would become just another annoying agitator website that clutters the search results with less than helpful results, so this was a good move on google's part.
- mikeg8 13y agoI wonder if this penalty would have been this severe if their "apology" was an actual apology. If I was in Google's position and had waited to see the RG response, I would have been less forgiving after the tone of that letter. But that is just my opinion...
- tzs 13y agoMicrosoft should jump on this. Run ads promoting Rap Genius as the best lyrics site on the web, and noting that you can find it easily with Bing, but not with Google. Kind of like those Visa ads that highlighted some cool place and then said don't bother of you use American Express, because the cool place doesn't take AmEx, it takes Visa.
- hayksaakian 13y agoI wish I was a Microsoft marketing exec so I could take credit for this idea.
- undoware 13y agoI'm sure some exec already has.
- josephcooney 13y agoThis is from the same team that brought us the 'scroogled' campaign? I doubt they know what Rap Genius is....
- 001sky 13y agoThis> http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/media/rap-genius-techcrunch-conference-650-430.jpg http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/media...
- scrrr 13y agoImpressive what one company can do to you if they decide you're not playing by their rules. (Not defending RG, I just think this is a good example of how much power Google has..)
- bdcravens 13y agoThat's our world. Everytime we trumpet the fact that they're a power that can stand up to the Apples and NSAs of the world, remember where that power and strength comes from. Not a bad thing, merely a double-edged sword.
- crazygringo 13y agoI find Google's actions to be bizarre. Getting people to link to you is what SEO is all about. Basically every site concerned with SEO does it in one form or another -- I thought this was what most every blog affiliate program was about! So Google decides to "punish" RapGenius just because its program got a little bit of public notice, while 99.9% of other sites which do the same, continue doing the same thing, unpunished? It just comes across as capricious and petty. For a site as large as Google, there should be some kind of due process involved with clear published guidelines, or (preferably) they should just work on improving their algorithm. How is what Rap Genius is doing any different than Amazon or iTunes paying you for affiliate links, or you paying a blog to advertise you, or buying a friend a beer to include a link to you? Where exactly does the line get drawn?
- sanswork 13y agoThere are clear guidelines and due process. Amazon and iTunes aren't paying you for the link they are paying you for the sale. In the second and third cases it is no different if you're paying for a keyword link and if Google found out about it you would be penalized.
- jonahx 13y agoWhere can you find those guidelines?
- sanswork 13y agohttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769 (You find it by searching google webmaster guidelines)
- deelowe 13y agohttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en
- smackfu 13y agoBesides the other links, here are the ones for link schemes, which are the issue in this case: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356
- fuckpig 13y ago"Don't be evil." Well, at least until you become a monopolist. Then go right ahead.
- bdcravens 13y agoSo everyone talks about RG being superior due to its annotation. (true) But doesn't this identify that 80% of it's traffic comes from "m-low dogg gangsta money freaks and junk lyrics" searches? So at maximum, 20% of users use annotation features (surely some still use it for purely lyrics simply due to it being it easy to remember)
- chatmasta 13y agoThat's ignoring the presumably large contingent of users including myself and other commenters here who use Google as a direct line to search Rapgenius, like "Rapgenius Kendrick Lamar swimming pools," as it's faster than going to Rapgenius itself. You could get more accurate numbers by looking at at percent of search traffic to Rapgenius does not include the keyword "Rapgenius" (though you can't do that anymore since google now scrubs SERP referrers).