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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
by 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 agoIt's less execution and more suicide isn't it?
- rickhanlonii 13y agoExactly. 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 agoGood thing they also cracked down on Expedia after that disgruntled black-hat SEO outed some of his colleagues working for Expedia. /s
- JohnTHaller 13y agoThere is no execution going on. They knowingly engaged in blackhat SEO. Now they are paying the rather well-known penalty. They need to wait it out while that penalty is active (likely slimming down their burn rate) and focus on gaining customers through other avenues. Or kill their brand and reboot as a different one with a different URL on a different IP.
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoDo not underestimate domain age/link age in calculation of pr. Moving to a brand new domain would forfeit all of that.
- ceejayoz 13y agoNot to mention all inbound links.
- dkuntz2 13y agoHTTP 301 ?
- ceejayoz 13y agoA penalized site is unlikely to be allowed to pass on its PR.
- dkuntz2 13y agoRight. But the inbound links can still get to the new site. What I got from your comment was concern for other websites who linked to RapGenius, and the users of those websites...
- ceejayoz 13y agoWell, 301ing them is probably going to apply the penalty to the new brand, making the technique useless for getting back in search results. Not 301ing them means you're starting out with PR0 all over again, in which case you might as well just wait out the penalty period. In either situation, the rebrand on a new domain solution sucks.
- joeblau 13y agoThey just need to follow the rules. I think once Google takes them out of the sin bin, they should regain their ranking.
- scott_s 13y agoI think that tech people talk about Google's power constantly.
- adventured 13y agoBefore Google it was Microsoft. Before Microsoft it was IBM.
- adamnemecek 13y agoMaybe name and domain change?
- ceejayoz 13y agoThat puts them at PR0, too.
- adamnemecek 13y agoWell maybe PR0 is better than PR >0 with no possible growth.
- poopsintub 13y agoPR0 would be far better than what they have now. I think they consider it a negative 0 or maybe a negative 1. They could buy an aged domain pretty cheaply. It all depends on what they want to change their brand name to.
- ceejayoz 13y agoIt's going to take longer (and more money) to rebrand and redevelop their PageRank than waiting out the penalty for a month or two would. Google has indicated that domain names that change hands get reset to zero, so buying an aged domain wouldn't help.
- poopsintub 13y agoThe penalty is unknown. They could be looking up to a year in the sandbox. Is it really worth waiting out if it could take that long? Change the logo and get on with it...
- dsil 13y agoI expect them to go back to right where they were once their penalty is lifted. Assuming most of their visits were google searchers clicking on the top link, nearly all of those visits/day will come back once they're the top link again. Remember that a huge majority of people have not heard about this controversy. The hacker news sort of community is not their primary audience. It's possible they'll be bigger, what with all the free (though bad) press they've gotten.
- JohnTHaller 13y agoThey may not be back at that top spot, though. It depends on how much of their ranking was organic and how much of it was due to the cheating.
- mtrimpe 13y agoA friend of mine ran a long tail content generation service, much like HitTail, and recently had all his clients penalized regardless of the quality of the content they wrote for those long tail keywords. Apparently they already anticipated something like this because several other companies were being manually penalized over the past year and half following an algorithm that seemed like: "Which big AdWords spenders cut down significantly on their budget? Are they getting it organically now? Let's cut that off." Several of those companies are suing Google for violating EU regulations, so hopefully something will come out of that. The first step will probably be that penalizations can be fought through the EU judicial system, but it will be a while before we get jurisprudence on that. I don't know how this would work in the US legal system but, regardless of what the outcome would be in Rap Genius' case, it's probably time for similar jurisprudence to be established in the US.
- cycrutchfield 13y agoAdwords spend is completely unrelated to search ranking.
- mtrimpe 13y agoIf you're a company and you get to the #1 spot organically you can stop buying AdWords clicks for the same keywords.
- xiaoma 13y agoActually, adwords can be very profitable when you have a #1 organic ranking. http://searchengineland.com/google-research-even-if-you-rank-1-organically-you-can-double-your-clicks-with-paid-search-116713 http://searchengineland.com/google-research-even-if-you-rank...
- mtrimpe 13y agoTrue, but I don't think that applies equally strongly to ranking highly on low competition long tail results.
- oliwary 13y agoI think the fact that they did lose as much of their uniques means that there is not a lot of brand-loyalty in the market. Then no people would form loyalty for competitors that are now over RG in the google results and they would be back once the penalty is over or RG works things out with Google.
- cdgreen1 13y agoIt's just a matter of how do you quantify a crime against the almighty Google? I understand that Google have rules and regulations in place to protect themselves and consumers from these "online black hat thugs" but even the justice system have standard jail time for certain crimes. Now maybe there is a "standard jail sentence" in the Google justice system for voliating the rules, but what if there is not one? Do we allow Google to impose a death sentence for whatever they see fit?