6 ms·

Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

62 points by conover 13y ago

spindritf 13y ago
To recap. Google's algorithm is terrible, and despite having more PhDs on board than my uni, can be played by anyone with two brain cells and a mildly popular Twitter account. To rectify this, they crippled my search results by penalizing Rapgenius and instead pushing some AZlyrics junk that not only lacks annotations but is inaccurate. Seems like an easy fix, for the end user at least, add a keyword search for 'lyrics' to go directly to Rapgenius, right? No. Here's a search for smoke on the water http://rapgenius.com/search?q=smoke%20on%20the%20water http://rapgenius.com/search?q=smoke%20on%20the%20water First result? Pro Era – Like Water. Second? Childish Gambino – I. The Worst Guys. Third? Smoke DZA – Diamond. Arguably the most popular song in the history of rock and roll? Sixth. Those are some of the smartest people on the planet. I'm not being sarcastic. How depressing.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  They didn't really push AZLyrics, or any other lyrics site up. Those rankings haven't changed. Their position relative in the list you see based on your search terms has, but that's relative. Why should Google give special dispensation to RapGenius? Why should putting in something like "lyrics" or related content to someone being penalized get them to show up higher in the results? Why should Google be RapGenius' search engine? Why shouldn't RapGenius make their search better?
  - spindritf 13y ago
    RapGenius should have a better search. And Google shouldn't give special dispensation to RapGenius, it should return best possible results. Which they don't after excluding RapGenius. They purposefully broke their search results to protect their broken ranking method.
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      How is their ranking method broke? Most searches you make probably give you what you want within the top five results (excluding lyrics, as you've shown a weird need to have RapGenius be the source of your lyrics). How can you prove RapGenius is the "best result"? Especially considering that courts have ruled that ranking algorithms are just opinions. You can be of the opinion that RapGenius is better, but that's your opinion. Multiple people can also be of the same opinion, which is a huge factor involved in Google's ranking algorithm. Another huge factor involved in their ranking algorithm is dissuading blackhat SEO techniques, which can make it appear like lots of people are of the opinion something is good. So, again, while you are of the opinion RapGenius is the best lyrics site, I'm not, even before all this brouhaha started I didn't really like their site, especially the annotations, which to me seemed like a bunch of bored English majors who didn't really have any insights on the annotations they were making, but wanted you to think they were really smart. I also don't listen to rap music, which might also affect my view on the annotations.
- cycrutchfield 13y ago
  What are you going on about? I don't think you have the slightest idea about how Google's ranking algorithm, or for that matter any ranking algorithm, actually works.
- captainmuon 13y ago
  Google is resting on their laurels. I'm convinced their actual algorithm hasn't changed much in the last few years, despite announcements claiming otherwise. They changed the handling of search queries (searches are interpreted much less literally than a few years ago). They changed the way that pages are indexed, and changed the intervals to be smarter (faster for news sites, slower for sites that don't change). They now even "render" the pages partially to account for CSS and JS. They have smart stemming and synonym algorithms when building the indexes. But the actual algorithm - "PageRank" and the parts surrounding it - hasn't changed much I think, except for some parameter tuning. Instead, they probably have a pile of semi-automatic "filters" to deal with spam and blackhat SEO. Engineers write a filter in code, test it against a test index, and then it goes into the new index version. I believe they are going more and more into manual intervention, and that they can now directly penalize/push sites without going down to the indexing level. I can't prove it right now, but I'm pretty sure that the first SERP for popular search terms is actually manually curated, with the really organic links coming later. (I'm still trying to figure out a test methodology to analyse it :-).)
- siegecraft 13y ago
  First off, who cares if the top result now gives you no annotations? No one cared about annotations until rapgenius started adding them so people could know what the more obscure portions of rap lyrics meant and then they gamified the shit out of it so that every single word in a song would be annotated so that you now know the meaning of "I set fire to homes, arsonist" is because it helpfully explains that an arsonist is someone who sets fires. And then put annotations everywhere even on their stupid blog posts, it's like they just discovered HyperCard. And how to find smoke on the water? Maybe put some quotes around it? http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%22smoke+on+the+water%22 http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%22smoke+on+the+water%22
sillysaurus2 13y ago
Ok, how can Rap Genius recover from this? They're one of the best (and least shady) lyrics sites on the net. They acted immorally, yes, but is justifiable to summarily execute their company? Google has a domineering position in the market, and it's a bit ironic that people were quick to call for Microsoft to be split into multiple companies about a decade ago, yet nobody bats an eye when Google exercises their power. (I personally don't believe either company should be split; just pointing out an interesting parallel.) So what can Rapgenius do? Are they screwed? EDIT: Also, how long does the penalty last for? I think people are assuming 30 days, but is that really the case? Even still, 30 days is a long time. They may not be okay afterwards. Whereas, say, a week-long ban would've had the same deterrent effect.
- obituary_latte 13y ago
  It's less execution and more suicide isn't it?
  - rickhanlonii 13y ago
    Exactly. I know the scene here feels bad for RapGenius because they're putting themselves in their shoes and appreciating how devastating a penalty this is. But I don't feel bad for them whatsoever, and neither should anyone else. This is a penalty that they deserve. They took a risk and they lost. They knew what they were doing and the potential destruction of their traffic, and they did it anyway. You don't get less time in the penalty box just because you're the favorite or best player on the team. In fact, you have a greater responsibility to play by the rules and I would make the argument that your penalty should be even greater. Besides, if the refs played favorites, the refs would have no credibility.
    - mtrimpe 13y ago
      Good thing they also cracked down on Expedia after that disgruntled black-hat SEO outed some of his colleagues working for Expedia. /s
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
minimaxir 13y ago
What's interesting is that the number of uniques is on a downward linear trend after the initial penalty.
sscalia 13y ago
"Don't be evil" Rapgenius got punished for playing the game better than anyone else. Who's to say this couldn't happen to highly relevant sources of information? Wikipedia? Underground sites? This is the equivalent of censorship.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  What? The "game" RapGenius played was the act of being evil.
  - petercooper 13y ago
    the act of being evil. Let's get some perspective here. They were offering to promote people's pages in return for them linking back to them. Far from being evil, this isn't even illegal.
    - codygman 13y ago
      So? Only one thing matters: They broke the TOS and Google rightfully enforced it.
      - tedivm 13y ago
        The point isn't that Google was wrong in doing so, at least not in the thread you're responding to. The point was that violating a TOS is not "evil"- no one died, no one was tortured or raped, there weren't death camps or civil liberties being violated. This was stupid, it wasn't evil.
      - captainmuon 13y ago
        Well, technically they didn't break the TOS, because you don't sign a TOS to get listed on Google. :-)
        codygman 13y ago
        Well, technically since they didn't sign up for getting listed on Google they shouldn't complain about getting delisted. :-) Also, they could have submitted their site to Google.
goldenkey 13y ago
It wasn't so genius to be expository to random people via email, about a link-back scam. Sorry RapDingus, it's over; maybe next go around you'll have less hubris and daringness in using unethical practices. http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed
- sscalia 13y ago
  If you think this isn't happening all the time, everywhere -- you're mistaken.
  - boxy 13y ago
    People rob and steal, does that make it acceptable for you to do it? People are racist, does that make it acceptable for you to do it? People don't give up seats for pregnant and old women, is it acceptable if you don't? Not everything is black and white, but this is. What I'm getting at sscalia is that the small minded way people like you think is something that's wrong with this society. Fix up.
  - goldenkey 13y ago
    Not many funded startups are dumb enough to publicly email folk asking for links in return for tweets/linkbacks. That's pure stupidity; might as well upload a video on a bad political stance with your brand overlayed, because the worms don't stay in the can with any kind of public communication. They should have been more clock-and-dagger with their scheming -- their hubris was their downfall. Of course many spammy sites use this practice but they don't have the respect from the tech community that Rap Genius warrants as a Y-Combinator funded entity. They lost that, and it's going to be a steep climb for them to find talented folk that want to be part of a seedy operation.
brianpgordon 13y ago
It's pretty scary how much Google controls the internet. I wish Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo weren't so much worse than Google, or I'd happily use them.
- captainmuon 13y ago
  Give me just 20-30 million dollars, legal protection from any patent claims, and (providing my search engine works well technically) make it the default in a small percentage of all Firefox installs. What I'm trying to say is, Google doesn't have the monopoly because they're the only ones who can build a good search engine. The have the monopoly because they do have good technology, but also because of path dependence, and because there is no political effort to build up a competitor. I already posted a couple of days ago, there are a bunch of ways governments could support competitors when one search engine controls a large fraction of the market, say more than 2/3. For example a special monopoly tax, subsidies for competitors, etc. One thing I think would be nice is to make search engines offer a free/very cheap API (as long as they have > XX % market share). Anybody can come along and build a Google + Bing + Pokemon-Wiki meta search engine. If you tune it to be profitable, you'll have a lot of competing search engine frontends spring up. But you'll also have a lot of search engine backends (and not just Bing, Google, and Yandex), because its suddenly profitable to build verticals (e.g. indexing just tech news or recipies), which require less resources technically - because the vertical backends get traffic through the competing frontends. And I could choose a frontend that gives me Google-like searches, or one that interprets terms more literal (like when you use +"term" in Google), which would be great for programming related stuff. There could be another one focussing on social media, or local stuff, etc..
vijayboyapati 13y ago
Not only is this bad for RapGenius, it's bad for Google, and most importantly bad for Google's users. Yes, RapGenius screwed up, and they've paid the price. But they've publicly recognized what they did and apologized. Google really should reinstate their ranking, because people searching for lyrics right now are being given the huge disservice of using the ultra-spammy lyrics sites from days of yore.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  They haven't paid the price yet. RapGenius knowingly engaged in blackhat SEO and broke the public rules. The punishment is several months in SERP Siberia. RapGenius hasn't paid that yet, but they will.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  > Google really should reinstate their ranking, because people searching for lyrics right now are being given the huge disservice of using the ultra-spammy lyrics sites from days of yore. A short penalty of a few days or weeks isn't much of a deterrent. It may suck for people searching lyrics now, but making the page rank penalty effectively toothless would suck for everyone.
- bonemachine 13y ago
  The hell-banning will probably only be temporary (30 to 60 days). And RG didn't just "screw up" by trying to game the system; they were blatantly cocky about it, so that's probably why Google felt they needed to step in and teach them a thing or two. Let's hope the lesson sticks, at least.
- owenmarshall 13y ago
  >it's bad for Google, and most importantly bad for Google's users BS. What's good for Google is showing people that if you engage in bad practices your shit will get nuked from orbit, even if your site is better than the competitors. You'd better believe that companies are going to avoid blackhat SEO in the future after this, and that's absolutely in Google's interests.
  - 13y ago
jmduke 13y ago
Hypothetical question: if we ("we" being nebulous) were to unveil that every other major lyrics site (azlyrics, metrolyrics, stlyrics, lyricsfreak, lyrics365, etc. etc.) uses the same SEO tactics, would they receive the same attention and punishment?
- cycrutchfield 13y ago
  Yes, but those sites have more sense than to trumpet their affiliate link scams on Twitter
- zwily 13y ago
  I think everyone pretty much already assumes that all the other lyrics sites are as shady on their SEO as they are prolific in their on-page advertising. RapGenius was kinda held to a higher bar.
- captainmuon 13y ago
  Someone should just do blackhat SEO for a bunch of those sites, and then Google would have to punish them too (because who could proove that they didn't do it themselves?) Or taking it one step further, use these tactics to promote a controversial institution or politician (without them knowing). Then "leak" it to Google, so they get punished. Then claim Google is censoring them. Finally enjoy the outrage :-)
  - poopsintub 13y ago
    Domain and page authority weigh in on how much you can get away with link tactics imo. Sites that have been around for a few more years would likely withstand any blackhat tactics a third-party would shoot at them.
  - adrr 13y ago
    Google webmaster tools lets you disregard back links which removes any benefit or penalty of the links. So if someone added your site to a known link farm, you can disregard those back links from affecting your ranking.
- 13y ago
zinssmeister 13y ago
It's quite painful to watch these guys take this beating. What they've done wasn't nice, but the consequences are extreme. What is most concerning is the monopoly Google Search has over driving traffic/revenue for most sites.
- Derpbase 13y ago
  They are the sleeze of the startup world, why is it so painful to watch? I'll leave you this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo "Homie-source" "baller-source" Yep, let em' burn.
istorical 13y ago
SEO is such a fickle beast. To everyone here who's saying they brought this upon themselves, when rules are unenforced and all your competition breaks them, you've already hamstrung yourself if you don't break them too. If everyone in the MLB is juicing and a rookie gets caught, you don't say "what an idiot", you look at either 1) enforcing the rules on everyone and broadly changing the culture or 2) question whether the rules make sense in the first place.
- codygman 13y ago
  No. They broke the terms of service. They got banned. End of story.
  - istorical 13y ago
    What's it like seeing the world in black and white?
    - codygman 13y ago
      Not sure. I'm too busy seeing all the gray lines that would be created by Google giving preferential treatment to those deemed more "important" when they could have stayed black and white.
      - istorical 13y ago
        My point is that punishing RapGenius despite the blatant use of the same tactics by hundreds of other big internet brands IS preferential treatment. The fact that RapGenius' competitors weren't punished is giving THEM preferential treatment. Either punish everyone or punish no one.
        codygman 13y ago
        You know I think you are right. We should also apply this to murderers. Find and punish all the murders or let them all go free!
almosnow 13y ago
what if... rapgenius is a beautiful pr stunt cooked by google to show everyone how valuable it is for websites/startups?
Greenisus 13y ago
What should Google do in this situation? I fully understand them murdering Rap Genius in their indexes, but it also hurts Google since Rap Genius actually has the best content. First result for "jay-z holy grail lyrics" Google: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jayz/holygrail.html http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jayz/holygrail.html Bing: http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-holy-grail-lyrics http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-holy-grail-lyrics The Bing result is better (though both are valid). I would suspect that most sites pulling these sort of SEO scams are going to have lousy content, so the rule makes sense, but perhaps there should be some sort of human element to it as well? That's not scalable, though, so I'm not really sure what the best answer for Google is on this one.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  > What should Google do in this situation? I fully understand them murdering Rap Genius in their indexes, but it also hurts Google since Rap Genius actually has the best content. It helps them in the long term, as it dissuades sites from using blackhat SEO if they know their company can suffer severely for it
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  Is the Bing result really "better"? Lots of people would rather not have the annotations... Additionally, with AdBlock on, AZLyrics makes only 21 requests and takes 1.03 seconds to load completely on my machine. RapGenius (still with AdBlock on) takes 27 seconds to load, with 208 requests. Based solely on that I'd rather use AZLyrics than RapGenius.
  - Greenisus 13y ago
    Yeah, I suppose it's subjective. I personally think the RapGenius result is better, but you make a valid point about the performance and simplicity of the AZLyrics result.
jonknee 13y ago
Luckily their revenue has remained unchanged... $0. This could have been a financial disaster if Rap Genius was a real business, but you need to have revenue for that.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  Many people would kill to have a site with millions and millions of uniques. If monetization HAD to be the primary focus, they could make money. Growth and product is the top priority. Unfortunately for them one of those is suffering right now.
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    A site with millions of uniques doesn't = revenue. Nor does it equal success, interest from investors, etc. Source: running a ~2m unique site right now.
    - deletes 13y ago
      I have used your site quite often and was wondering why did you decide to make the downloaded program be wrapped with your executable? Why not just have a .rar/.zip of the actual program.
      - JohnTHaller 13y ago
        Quite a few reasons: http://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app#whypaf http://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app#whypaf
        deletes 13y ago
        There are sound arguments towards it. But Better Upgrading scares me.
        JohnTHaller 13y ago
maaaats 13y ago
I've missed some news lately with Christmas and all. Any context on this?
- conover 13y ago
  Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963365
champion 13y ago
damn, they got CUTT
boxy 13y ago
The title of this post has annoyed me.
physcab 13y ago
They'll recover. As much as I dislike their PR attitude (whether an act or not), they have a good product. I still listen to rap music, and I still want to know the meaning of the lyrics, so I'll go directly to the site if I have to. Google made it one click easier, but whatever, I have time. Companies have survived much worse blows. I worked for a music company that was not only being sued by every major record company, they were also taken out of all app stores. They persisted, and today I still listen to music from their site, even almost a decade later.
clarky07 13y ago
It seems somewhat unreasonable to manually penalize a website like this. If you can't figure it out algorithmically then it can't be that bad. Major companies (much bigger than Rap Genius) buy links all the time. How do I know? They have asked me for them. I used to run a financial blog and I know a certain company that bought links from pretty much every personal finance blog that would sell one to them, and I know this for a fact because I was in a network of blogs and talked about this on forums as a way to make money. I also have the emails to prove it. Why doesn't this company get penalized? I have no idea. I guess nobody decided to write a blog post about it, it didn't get picked up on Hacker News, and Matt Cutts hasn't noticed it yet. Seems like if this is possible there should be a reverse black hat market springing up soon. Do some really bad black hat SEO for your competitors and then get them killed by Google.

62 points by conover 13y ago

To recap. Google's algorithm is terrible, and despite having more PhDs on board than my uni, can be played by anyone with two brain cells and a mildly popular Twitter account. To rectify this, they crippled my search results by penalizing Rapgenius and instead pushing some AZlyrics junk that not only lacks annotations but is inaccurate. Seems like an easy fix, for the end user at least, add a keyword search for 'lyrics' to go directly to Rapgenius, right? No. Here's a search for smoke on the water http://rapgenius.com/search?q=smoke%20on%20the%20water http://rapgenius.com/search?q=smoke%20on%20the%20water First result? Pro Era – Like Water. Second? Childish Gambino – I. The Worst Guys. Third? Smoke DZA – Diamond. Arguably the most popular song in the history of rock and roll? Sixth. Those are some of the smartest people on the planet. I'm not being sarcastic. How depressing.

dkuntz2 13y ago
They didn't really push AZLyrics, or any other lyrics site up. Those rankings haven't changed. Their position relative in the list you see based on your search terms has, but that's relative. Why should Google give special dispensation to RapGenius? Why should putting in something like "lyrics" or related content to someone being penalized get them to show up higher in the results? Why should Google be RapGenius' search engine? Why shouldn't RapGenius make their search better?
- spindritf 13y ago
  RapGenius should have a better search. And Google shouldn't give special dispensation to RapGenius, it should return best possible results. Which they don't after excluding RapGenius. They purposefully broke their search results to protect their broken ranking method.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    How is their ranking method broke? Most searches you make probably give you what you want within the top five results (excluding lyrics, as you've shown a weird need to have RapGenius be the source of your lyrics). How can you prove RapGenius is the "best result"? Especially considering that courts have ruled that ranking algorithms are just opinions. You can be of the opinion that RapGenius is better, but that's your opinion. Multiple people can also be of the same opinion, which is a huge factor involved in Google's ranking algorithm. Another huge factor involved in their ranking algorithm is dissuading blackhat SEO techniques, which can make it appear like lots of people are of the opinion something is good. So, again, while you are of the opinion RapGenius is the best lyrics site, I'm not, even before all this brouhaha started I didn't really like their site, especially the annotations, which to me seemed like a bunch of bored English majors who didn't really have any insights on the annotations they were making, but wanted you to think they were really smart. I also don't listen to rap music, which might also affect my view on the annotations.
cycrutchfield 13y ago
What are you going on about? I don't think you have the slightest idea about how Google's ranking algorithm, or for that matter any ranking algorithm, actually works.
captainmuon 13y ago
Google is resting on their laurels. I'm convinced their actual algorithm hasn't changed much in the last few years, despite announcements claiming otherwise. They changed the handling of search queries (searches are interpreted much less literally than a few years ago). They changed the way that pages are indexed, and changed the intervals to be smarter (faster for news sites, slower for sites that don't change). They now even "render" the pages partially to account for CSS and JS. They have smart stemming and synonym algorithms when building the indexes. But the actual algorithm - "PageRank" and the parts surrounding it - hasn't changed much I think, except for some parameter tuning. Instead, they probably have a pile of semi-automatic "filters" to deal with spam and blackhat SEO. Engineers write a filter in code, test it against a test index, and then it goes into the new index version. I believe they are going more and more into manual intervention, and that they can now directly penalize/push sites without going down to the indexing level. I can't prove it right now, but I'm pretty sure that the first SERP for popular search terms is actually manually curated, with the really organic links coming later. (I'm still trying to figure out a test methodology to analyse it :-).)
siegecraft 13y ago
First off, who cares if the top result now gives you no annotations? No one cared about annotations until rapgenius started adding them so people could know what the more obscure portions of rap lyrics meant and then they gamified the shit out of it so that every single word in a song would be annotated so that you now know the meaning of "I set fire to homes, arsonist" is because it helpfully explains that an arsonist is someone who sets fires. And then put annotations everywhere even on their stupid blog posts, it's like they just discovered HyperCard. And how to find smoke on the water? Maybe put some quotes around it? http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%22smoke+on+the+water%22 http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%22smoke+on+the+water%22

sillysaurus2 13y ago

Ok, how can Rap Genius recover from this? They're one of the best (and least shady) lyrics sites on the net. They acted immorally, yes, but is justifiable to summarily execute their company? Google has a domineering position in the market, and it's a bit ironic that people were quick to call for Microsoft to be split into multiple companies about a decade ago, yet nobody bats an eye when Google exercises their power. (I personally don't believe either company should be split; just pointing out an interesting parallel.) So what can Rapgenius do? Are they screwed? EDIT: Also, how long does the penalty last for? I think people are assuming 30 days, but is that really the case? Even still, 30 days is a long time. They may not be okay afterwards. Whereas, say, a week-long ban would've had the same deterrent effect.

obituary_latte 13y ago
It's less execution and more suicide isn't it?
- rickhanlonii 13y ago
  Exactly. I know the scene here feels bad for RapGenius because they're putting themselves in their shoes and appreciating how devastating a penalty this is. But I don't feel bad for them whatsoever, and neither should anyone else. This is a penalty that they deserve. They took a risk and they lost. They knew what they were doing and the potential destruction of their traffic, and they did it anyway. You don't get less time in the penalty box just because you're the favorite or best player on the team. In fact, you have a greater responsibility to play by the rules and I would make the argument that your penalty should be even greater. Besides, if the refs played favorites, the refs would have no credibility.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    Good thing they also cracked down on Expedia after that disgruntled black-hat SEO outed some of his colleagues working for Expedia. /s
JohnTHaller 13y ago

minimaxir 13y ago

What's interesting is that the number of uniques is on a downward linear trend after the initial penalty.

sscalia 13y ago

"Don't be evil" Rapgenius got punished for playing the game better than anyone else. Who's to say this couldn't happen to highly relevant sources of information? Wikipedia? Underground sites? This is the equivalent of censorship.

minimaxir 13y ago
What? The "game" RapGenius played was the act of being evil.
- petercooper 13y ago
  the act of being evil. Let's get some perspective here. They were offering to promote people's pages in return for them linking back to them. Far from being evil, this isn't even illegal.
  - codygman 13y ago
    So? Only one thing matters: They broke the TOS and Google rightfully enforced it.
    - tedivm 13y ago
      The point isn't that Google was wrong in doing so, at least not in the thread you're responding to. The point was that violating a TOS is not "evil"- no one died, no one was tortured or raped, there weren't death camps or civil liberties being violated. This was stupid, it wasn't evil.
    - captainmuon 13y ago
      Well, technically they didn't break the TOS, because you don't sign a TOS to get listed on Google. :-)
      - codygman 13y ago
        Well, technically since they didn't sign up for getting listed on Google they shouldn't complain about getting delisted. :-) Also, they could have submitted their site to Google.

goldenkey 13y ago

It wasn't so genius to be expository to random people via email, about a link-back scam. Sorry RapDingus, it's over; maybe next go around you'll have less hubris and daringness in using unethical practices. http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed

sscalia 13y ago
If you think this isn't happening all the time, everywhere -- you're mistaken.
- boxy 13y ago
  People rob and steal, does that make it acceptable for you to do it? People are racist, does that make it acceptable for you to do it? People don't give up seats for pregnant and old women, is it acceptable if you don't? Not everything is black and white, but this is. What I'm getting at sscalia is that the small minded way people like you think is something that's wrong with this society. Fix up.
- goldenkey 13y ago
  Not many funded startups are dumb enough to publicly email folk asking for links in return for tweets/linkbacks. That's pure stupidity; might as well upload a video on a bad political stance with your brand overlayed, because the worms don't stay in the can with any kind of public communication. They should have been more clock-and-dagger with their scheming -- their hubris was their downfall. Of course many spammy sites use this practice but they don't have the respect from the tech community that Rap Genius warrants as a Y-Combinator funded entity. They lost that, and it's going to be a steep climb for them to find talented folk that want to be part of a seedy operation.

brianpgordon 13y ago

It's pretty scary how much Google controls the internet. I wish Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo weren't so much worse than Google, or I'd happily use them.

captainmuon 13y ago
Give me just 20-30 million dollars, legal protection from any patent claims, and (providing my search engine works well technically) make it the default in a small percentage of all Firefox installs. What I'm trying to say is, Google doesn't have the monopoly because they're the only ones who can build a good search engine. The have the monopoly because they do have good technology, but also because of path dependence, and because there is no political effort to build up a competitor. I already posted a couple of days ago, there are a bunch of ways governments could support competitors when one search engine controls a large fraction of the market, say more than 2/3. For example a special monopoly tax, subsidies for competitors, etc. One thing I think would be nice is to make search engines offer a free/very cheap API (as long as they have > XX % market share). Anybody can come along and build a Google + Bing + Pokemon-Wiki meta search engine. If you tune it to be profitable, you'll have a lot of competing search engine frontends spring up. But you'll also have a lot of search engine backends (and not just Bing, Google, and Yandex), because its suddenly profitable to build verticals (e.g. indexing just tech news or recipies), which require less resources technically - because the vertical backends get traffic through the competing frontends. And I could choose a frontend that gives me Google-like searches, or one that interprets terms more literal (like when you use +"term" in Google), which would be great for programming related stuff. There could be another one focussing on social media, or local stuff, etc..

vijayboyapati 13y ago

Not only is this bad for RapGenius, it's bad for Google, and most importantly bad for Google's users. Yes, RapGenius screwed up, and they've paid the price. But they've publicly recognized what they did and apologized. Google really should reinstate their ranking, because people searching for lyrics right now are being given the huge disservice of using the ultra-spammy lyrics sites from days of yore.

JohnTHaller 13y ago
They haven't paid the price yet. RapGenius knowingly engaged in blackhat SEO and broke the public rules. The punishment is several months in SERP Siberia. RapGenius hasn't paid that yet, but they will.
ceejayoz 13y ago
> Google really should reinstate their ranking, because people searching for lyrics right now are being given the huge disservice of using the ultra-spammy lyrics sites from days of yore. A short penalty of a few days or weeks isn't much of a deterrent. It may suck for people searching lyrics now, but making the page rank penalty effectively toothless would suck for everyone.
bonemachine 13y ago
The hell-banning will probably only be temporary (30 to 60 days). And RG didn't just "screw up" by trying to game the system; they were blatantly cocky about it, so that's probably why Google felt they needed to step in and teach them a thing or two. Let's hope the lesson sticks, at least.
owenmarshall 13y ago
>it's bad for Google, and most importantly bad for Google's users BS. What's good for Google is showing people that if you engage in bad practices your shit will get nuked from orbit, even if your site is better than the competitors. You'd better believe that companies are going to avoid blackhat SEO in the future after this, and that's absolutely in Google's interests.
- 13y ago

jmduke 13y ago

Hypothetical question: if we ("we" being nebulous) were to unveil that every other major lyrics site (azlyrics, metrolyrics, stlyrics, lyricsfreak, lyrics365, etc. etc.) uses the same SEO tactics, would they receive the same attention and punishment?

cycrutchfield 13y ago
Yes, but those sites have more sense than to trumpet their affiliate link scams on Twitter
zwily 13y ago
I think everyone pretty much already assumes that all the other lyrics sites are as shady on their SEO as they are prolific in their on-page advertising. RapGenius was kinda held to a higher bar.
captainmuon 13y ago
Someone should just do blackhat SEO for a bunch of those sites, and then Google would have to punish them too (because who could proove that they didn't do it themselves?) Or taking it one step further, use these tactics to promote a controversial institution or politician (without them knowing). Then "leak" it to Google, so they get punished. Then claim Google is censoring them. Finally enjoy the outrage :-)
- poopsintub 13y ago
  Domain and page authority weigh in on how much you can get away with link tactics imo. Sites that have been around for a few more years would likely withstand any blackhat tactics a third-party would shoot at them.
- adrr 13y ago
  Google webmaster tools lets you disregard back links which removes any benefit or penalty of the links. So if someone added your site to a known link farm, you can disregard those back links from affecting your ranking.
13y ago

zinssmeister 13y ago

It's quite painful to watch these guys take this beating. What they've done wasn't nice, but the consequences are extreme. What is most concerning is the monopoly Google Search has over driving traffic/revenue for most sites.

Derpbase 13y ago
They are the sleeze of the startup world, why is it so painful to watch? I'll leave you this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo "Homie-source" "baller-source" Yep, let em' burn.

istorical 13y ago

SEO is such a fickle beast. To everyone here who's saying they brought this upon themselves, when rules are unenforced and all your competition breaks them, you've already hamstrung yourself if you don't break them too. If everyone in the MLB is juicing and a rookie gets caught, you don't say "what an idiot", you look at either 1) enforcing the rules on everyone and broadly changing the culture or 2) question whether the rules make sense in the first place.

codygman 13y ago
No. They broke the terms of service. They got banned. End of story.
- istorical 13y ago
  What's it like seeing the world in black and white?
  - codygman 13y ago
    Not sure. I'm too busy seeing all the gray lines that would be created by Google giving preferential treatment to those deemed more "important" when they could have stayed black and white.
    - istorical 13y ago
      My point is that punishing RapGenius despite the blatant use of the same tactics by hundreds of other big internet brands IS preferential treatment. The fact that RapGenius' competitors weren't punished is giving THEM preferential treatment. Either punish everyone or punish no one.
      - codygman 13y ago
        You know I think you are right. We should also apply this to murderers. Find and punish all the murders or let them all go free!

almosnow 13y ago

what if... rapgenius is a beautiful pr stunt cooked by google to show everyone how valuable it is for websites/startups?

Greenisus 13y ago

What should Google do in this situation? I fully understand them murdering Rap Genius in their indexes, but it also hurts Google since Rap Genius actually has the best content. First result for "jay-z holy grail lyrics" Google: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jayz/holygrail.html http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jayz/holygrail.html Bing: http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-holy-grail-lyrics http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-holy-grail-lyrics The Bing result is better (though both are valid). I would suspect that most sites pulling these sort of SEO scams are going to have lousy content, so the rule makes sense, but perhaps there should be some sort of human element to it as well? That's not scalable, though, so I'm not really sure what the best answer for Google is on this one.

ceejayoz 13y ago
> What should Google do in this situation? I fully understand them murdering Rap Genius in their indexes, but it also hurts Google since Rap Genius actually has the best content. It helps them in the long term, as it dissuades sites from using blackhat SEO if they know their company can suffer severely for it
dkuntz2 13y ago
Is the Bing result really "better"? Lots of people would rather not have the annotations... Additionally, with AdBlock on, AZLyrics makes only 21 requests and takes 1.03 seconds to load completely on my machine. RapGenius (still with AdBlock on) takes 27 seconds to load, with 208 requests. Based solely on that I'd rather use AZLyrics than RapGenius.
- Greenisus 13y ago
  Yeah, I suppose it's subjective. I personally think the RapGenius result is better, but you make a valid point about the performance and simplicity of the AZLyrics result.

jonknee 13y ago

Luckily their revenue has remained unchanged... $0. This could have been a financial disaster if Rap Genius was a real business, but you need to have revenue for that.

jonathanjaeger 13y ago
Many people would kill to have a site with millions and millions of uniques. If monetization HAD to be the primary focus, they could make money. Growth and product is the top priority. Unfortunately for them one of those is suffering right now.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  A site with millions of uniques doesn't = revenue. Nor does it equal success, interest from investors, etc. Source: running a ~2m unique site right now.
  - deletes 13y ago
    I have used your site quite often and was wondering why did you decide to make the downloaded program be wrapped with your executable? Why not just have a .rar/.zip of the actual program.
    - JohnTHaller 13y ago
      Quite a few reasons: http://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app#whypaf http://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app#whypaf
      - deletes 13y ago
        There are sound arguments towards it. But Better Upgrading scares me.
        JohnTHaller 13y ago

maaaats 13y ago

I've missed some news lately with Christmas and all. Any context on this?

conover 13y ago
Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963365

champion 13y ago

damn, they got CUTT

boxy 13y ago

The title of this post has annoyed me.

physcab 13y ago

They'll recover. As much as I dislike their PR attitude (whether an act or not), they have a good product. I still listen to rap music, and I still want to know the meaning of the lyrics, so I'll go directly to the site if I have to. Google made it one click easier, but whatever, I have time. Companies have survived much worse blows. I worked for a music company that was not only being sued by every major record company, they were also taken out of all app stores. They persisted, and today I still listen to music from their site, even almost a decade later.

clarky07 13y ago

It seems somewhat unreasonable to manually penalize a website like this. If you can't figure it out algorithmically then it can't be that bad. Major companies (much bigger than Rap Genius) buy links all the time. How do I know? They have asked me for them. I used to run a financial blog and I know a certain company that bought links from pretty much every personal finance blog that would sell one to them, and I know this for a fact because I was in a network of blogs and talked about this on forums as a way to make money. I also have the emails to prove it. Why doesn't this company get penalized? I have no idea. I guess nobody decided to write a blog post about it, it didn't get picked up on Hacker News, and Matt Cutts hasn't noticed it yet. Seems like if this is possible there should be a reverse black hat market springing up soon. Do some really bad black hat SEO for your competitors and then get them killed by Google.