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Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought

Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought backlinks to artificially inflate their pagerank. They knew they were cheating but they did it anyway. They got caught. And they were hit with a manual action on Google. Sounds good so far. But that's where it stops. RapGenius, using the connections they have from their multi-million dollars in VC funding, got back on Google and was able to avoid paying the price for their cheating. Compare this to regular websites. Lots of smaller sites will end up paying a "whitehat SEO" firm to work on a "link strategy". These firms will claim up down and sideways that what they do is legal, ethical and follows Google's rules. But, what they actually do is either (1) create networks of fake sites to provide backlinks on certain terms to artificially boost the site, (2) place spam comments using bots on legitimate sites to do the same [not that this will thankfully no longer work well due to the latest Google algorithm update], or (3) pay legit sites to place backlinks to artificially transfer pagerank the same way that RapGenius did. Now, these other sites, when they get caught, they get a manual action or a smackdown. The difference? They have to actually pay the penalty. Arguing that they didn't know usually doesn't work. The penalty is LONG. They can't call on their VC firm to make calls at Google to give them a get out of jail free card. I'd like to call on Google to create a public policy on how they handle these manual actions with some clearly defined penalties (example: 3 month manual action of 6 PR drop, etc) and to consistently enforce them across the board. That way a mom and pop site that pays a 'whitehat SEO firm' and gets caught doesn't have a worse time than a site like RapGenius that purposely engages in blackhat SEO who can use their VC connections to get out of having to pay a penalty in under 2 weeks. It's also sad that Google gave this get out of jail free card to a site whose entire business model is based around other people's copyrighted works which RapGenius doesn't have a license for, doesn't pay for, and publishes illegally.

michaeldunworth 13y ago
This.
sheetjs 13y ago
Google is a business, and there is a very good chance that they financially benefit from Rap Genius being restored. Other companies that suffer don't have that financial link, and maybe the best course is for them to raise VC funds (and posture themselves so that Google stands to lose if they penalize) I agree with you in theory, but in practice it sounds like you expect google to act as if they care about things like fairness. They are a company. The bottom line is what matters. If you think it's unfair, then try to hit the bottom line by using other services and convincing your friends and family to do the same
- ryanmerket 13y ago
  How much revenue do you think RapGenius brings Google? Even if it was $10M/qtr that is a drop in the bucket for Google.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    RapGenius brings Google $0 in revenue. RapGenius brings in $0 in revenue for anyone--it's not monetized.
    - throwawaykf03 13y ago
      Another way to look at it is: If X is a really good website in its category, and Google consistently puts X above other websites in search results for that category, the user experience on Google is better with X than without X. This will lead to more users using Google more, and contribute to all the effects that make Google money. So even if Rap Genius is not bringing revenue to Google, Google certainly can derive value from Rap Genius that contributes to revenue. However, since the effects are indirect, it's not easy (though not impossible) to put a monetary value on this relationship.
    - aaronwall 13y ago
      Another way to look at it is if Google detonates start ups from VCs they co-invest with, will their own internal venture arm get squeezed out of some deals? And if implicit or explicit risk protection (and back channeled information about potential upcoming risks) comes as a fringe benefit of direct investment, doesn't that "free insurance" allow Google Ventures to guarantee themselves more favorable investing terms?
argonaut 13y ago
I keep hearing people bandying about this "VC connection" baseless innuendo. How is that anything but baseless, cynical speculation? Remember, we're talking about someone (Matt Cutts) who penalized Google's own Chome website for improper links. If there was ever a conflict of interest, that would be it. The idea that Matt was doing RG a special favor through a16z or other investors is an extraordinary claim, and we're going to need more evidence than just gut feeling.
- benologist 13y ago
  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ Also, I have invested in Perfect Third (the company that makes the WakeMate), Zencoder, Cardpool, Tasty Labs, Drchrono, Grubwithus, PoundPay, Apportable, Mailgun, and Parse. I have also invested in CircuitHub, PlanGrid, Pixelapse, ZenPayroll, Trigger.io, Zenefits, and True Link Financial. I have also invested in Lowercase Capital (Lowercase Ventures Fund I), Y Combinator (Y Combinator Fund II), Lowercase 140, and Lowercase Spur. Pretty reasonable to assume RG enjoyed a direct line to Cutts all through the entire thing.
  - argonaut 13y ago
    X is an investor, therefore X must be directly persuaded by Y investor? That's not any evidence that RG specifically had a direct line to Cutts, and that this actually influenced the outcome. Again, we're talking about someone who penalized Chrome. I don't know of any greater conflict of interest than your employer. In an argument about someone's motivations, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in the context of their past behavior.
    - benologist 13y ago
      I'm inclined to believe that savvy investors would leverage their own investors and network to solve problems when they can. Especially when X is an investor in Y. The incredibly fast timeline is pretty clear evidence of communication considering the standard response time is never and the standard unpunishing time is never and the standard result is basically "change your domain".
skrebbel 13y ago
You're forgetting something. As a search engine user, I don't care whether the search engine firm is "fair", whether their rules apply equally to everyone or not. It's not a country, it's a search engine. You can say what you want about Rap Genius, but they're just about the only lyrics site that doesn't suck. As a searcher, I want to get to sites that don't suck. In the case of lyrics, that's Rap Genius. Google has an interest to show me the best results. How they determine those results, and how much of that process is manual, is up to them. It's nice that they decided that penalties and virtual spankings are a good thing in the long run, and it's lovely that you think that they're too inconsistent and unfair about it, but I'm a user. I don't care. I just want the best results.
- scrrr 13y ago
  I own many old Vinyl records and often they come with the lyrics for all the songs on them. That's enough for me. I don't need funny annotations. So, while Rap Genius is a cool website, I wouldn't say that all the other lyrics websites suck.
- dpatrick86 13y ago
  Even if the intent is actually enhance user experience, I think by making these decisions manually instead of algorithmically that a pretty reasonable assumption could be made of human bias inadvertently coming into play.
- robbrown451 13y ago
  That's great in the short term. In the long term, having consistent and harsh punishments (whether manual or algorithmic) for SEO cheaters is very much in the interest of Google's users, because it preserves the integrity of the search results.
  - Taek 13y ago
    I don't think that punishment is necessarily effective in the long run either. If you are good at dirty SEO, you will accept your punishment on one site/business and restart with a different site/business, and hopefully last longer until getting caught this time. With the goal of minimizing overall dirty SEO, Google shouldn't get caught up in an over-emphasis on punishment. Especially when the website being punished is actually the website that should be chosen, and they only use SEO to compete with other SEO.
unbeli 13y ago
Read the article. They are back because they did a lot of work finding all these bad links and using Google’s disavowal tool to kill them, not because of their VC funding or whatever other influence you think they have on Google.
- aaronwall 13y ago
  Nice try. Removing 200 links out of nearly 200,000 links in a holiday week is not a lot of work. In fact, Google has told others waiting to be reconsidered that the wait time is multiple weeks. https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/statuses/418734227228606464 https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/statuses/418734227228606464 Further, some sites which submitted reconsideration requests before RapGenius was penalized have not received a response. And in many such cases those other sites: had far fewer links, removed a far greater quantity of links, disavowed a far greater quantity of links & were involved in something that was nowhere near as overt/intentional on the behalf of the webmaster (I've seen cases where the notices came after a payday loan hacker mixed in someone else's sites with their own links to create cover for their work)
  - unreal37 13y ago
    Not to argue with Aaron Wall on an SEO topic, but you read the same article I did. There were 200,000 total links to Rap Genius and most of them were legit. Only a small subset analyzed ended up being suspicious. They got 200 webmasters to remove their links, a few didn't, and the rest ended up being "site scrapers" who steal other people's sites. They just added those to disavow. Seems like they acted very quickly to rectify every suspicious link they could find. But yes, they got special treatment in having the manual penalty removed after only a few days. But it's a legitimately popular site. You'd expect Google to do that since its harming Google's own users during the penalty.
  - blumkvist 13y ago
    A very well known and funded business gets preferential treatment. BOO-HOO. Do you think Bill Gates waits on a line at the bank? At the mayor's office? Anywhere at all? In real life if you are powerful, you get respect. There is no such thing as fairness. It's a paradigm of the feeble minded. Most likely a defense mechanism - "look guys, he cheated on the exam, let's tell the teacher!".
bonemachine 13y ago
But if they post clearly defined limits and penalties, then that brings them into the territory of offering a "terms of service" for which they can potentially be sued. So on many levels, keeping it vague and saying simply, in so many words "just be good, don't do anything abusive" like many services do for high-volume APIs (e.g. YouTube, last I checked) -- makes for a pretty good, common-sense fit in this case. It also puts the emphasis were it should be (in my view): not on "don't do X or Y, OR ELSE" but on "look, just be ethical, and use your head, please." It's just too bad for RG that they didn't head Google gentle and clearly (enough) worded advice, first time around.
unreal37 13y ago
Banning Rap Genius also made Google look bad. I bet 100,000s of people search Google for "rap genius get lucky" and similar searches every day, and Google was not displaying the results they clearly wanted. In this case, the Google search result page was clearly "worse" for the ban. Google harmed itself also in this ban. Which does not happen when they ban your herb garden equipment website.
- aaronwall 13y ago
  It looks as brand related searches were not that significant until the Google penalty happened. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius%2C%20rap%20genius&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius%2C%20rap%20... According to Compete.com about 5% of their searches were brand-related queries https://app.compete.com/website/rapgenius.com/ https://app.compete.com/website/rapgenius.com/ SimilarWeb also shows most their top queries were unbranded http://www.similarweb.com/website/rapgenius.com http://www.similarweb.com/website/rapgenius.com Alexa puts the branded-traffic number closer to 2% http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com (All these tools have errors, but sites like Amazon.com or eBay are more like 15% to 25%+ on the branded traffic front http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ebay.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ebay.com ).
pmarca 13y ago
Do you have any evidence "VC connections" had anything to do with anything? Or are you just making shit up?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- pmarca 13y ago
  OK then, I'll just put you down for "making shit up".
jyothi 13y ago
It is digital and everything can be traced back - almost. But it is still the world of rich and famous. A similar & more severe penalty was lifted off the most popular Indian ecommerce site - flipkart. I remember meeting their head of marketing in 2011 who had no idea of the penalty which hit the site probably 2009-10. As a user, yes I would like this site to rank up just so RG fans are saying they like RG result in google. But it is so unfair Google sends cryptic messages on webmaster for reconsideration requests but can entertain a direct call and lift off penalty. The least Google could do is to be transparent (fairness is hard)

michaeldunworth 13y ago

This.

sheetjs 13y ago

Google is a business, and there is a very good chance that they financially benefit from Rap Genius being restored. Other companies that suffer don't have that financial link, and maybe the best course is for them to raise VC funds (and posture themselves so that Google stands to lose if they penalize) I agree with you in theory, but in practice it sounds like you expect google to act as if they care about things like fairness. They are a company. The bottom line is what matters. If you think it's unfair, then try to hit the bottom line by using other services and convincing your friends and family to do the same

ryanmerket 13y ago
How much revenue do you think RapGenius brings Google? Even if it was $10M/qtr that is a drop in the bucket for Google.
- jonknee 13y ago
  RapGenius brings Google $0 in revenue. RapGenius brings in $0 in revenue for anyone--it's not monetized.
  - throwawaykf03 13y ago
    Another way to look at it is: If X is a really good website in its category, and Google consistently puts X above other websites in search results for that category, the user experience on Google is better with X than without X. This will lead to more users using Google more, and contribute to all the effects that make Google money. So even if Rap Genius is not bringing revenue to Google, Google certainly can derive value from Rap Genius that contributes to revenue. However, since the effects are indirect, it's not easy (though not impossible) to put a monetary value on this relationship.
  - aaronwall 13y ago
    Another way to look at it is if Google detonates start ups from VCs they co-invest with, will their own internal venture arm get squeezed out of some deals? And if implicit or explicit risk protection (and back channeled information about potential upcoming risks) comes as a fringe benefit of direct investment, doesn't that "free insurance" allow Google Ventures to guarantee themselves more favorable investing terms?

argonaut 13y ago

I keep hearing people bandying about this "VC connection" baseless innuendo. How is that anything but baseless, cynical speculation? Remember, we're talking about someone (Matt Cutts) who penalized Google's own Chome website for improper links. If there was ever a conflict of interest, that would be it. The idea that Matt was doing RG a special favor through a16z or other investors is an extraordinary claim, and we're going to need more evidence than just gut feeling.

benologist 13y ago
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ Also, I have invested in Perfect Third (the company that makes the WakeMate), Zencoder, Cardpool, Tasty Labs, Drchrono, Grubwithus, PoundPay, Apportable, Mailgun, and Parse. I have also invested in CircuitHub, PlanGrid, Pixelapse, ZenPayroll, Trigger.io, Zenefits, and True Link Financial. I have also invested in Lowercase Capital (Lowercase Ventures Fund I), Y Combinator (Y Combinator Fund II), Lowercase 140, and Lowercase Spur. Pretty reasonable to assume RG enjoyed a direct line to Cutts all through the entire thing.
- argonaut 13y ago
  X is an investor, therefore X must be directly persuaded by Y investor? That's not any evidence that RG specifically had a direct line to Cutts, and that this actually influenced the outcome. Again, we're talking about someone who penalized Chrome. I don't know of any greater conflict of interest than your employer. In an argument about someone's motivations, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in the context of their past behavior.
  - benologist 13y ago
    I'm inclined to believe that savvy investors would leverage their own investors and network to solve problems when they can. Especially when X is an investor in Y. The incredibly fast timeline is pretty clear evidence of communication considering the standard response time is never and the standard unpunishing time is never and the standard result is basically "change your domain".

skrebbel 13y ago

You're forgetting something. As a search engine user, I don't care whether the search engine firm is "fair", whether their rules apply equally to everyone or not. It's not a country, it's a search engine. You can say what you want about Rap Genius, but they're just about the only lyrics site that doesn't suck. As a searcher, I want to get to sites that don't suck. In the case of lyrics, that's Rap Genius. Google has an interest to show me the best results. How they determine those results, and how much of that process is manual, is up to them. It's nice that they decided that penalties and virtual spankings are a good thing in the long run, and it's lovely that you think that they're too inconsistent and unfair about it, but I'm a user. I don't care. I just want the best results.

scrrr 13y ago
I own many old Vinyl records and often they come with the lyrics for all the songs on them. That's enough for me. I don't need funny annotations. So, while Rap Genius is a cool website, I wouldn't say that all the other lyrics websites suck.
dpatrick86 13y ago
Even if the intent is actually enhance user experience, I think by making these decisions manually instead of algorithmically that a pretty reasonable assumption could be made of human bias inadvertently coming into play.
robbrown451 13y ago
That's great in the short term. In the long term, having consistent and harsh punishments (whether manual or algorithmic) for SEO cheaters is very much in the interest of Google's users, because it preserves the integrity of the search results.
- Taek 13y ago
  I don't think that punishment is necessarily effective in the long run either. If you are good at dirty SEO, you will accept your punishment on one site/business and restart with a different site/business, and hopefully last longer until getting caught this time. With the goal of minimizing overall dirty SEO, Google shouldn't get caught up in an over-emphasis on punishment. Especially when the website being punished is actually the website that should be chosen, and they only use SEO to compete with other SEO.

unbeli 13y ago

Read the article. They are back because they did a lot of work finding all these bad links and using Google’s disavowal tool to kill them, not because of their VC funding or whatever other influence you think they have on Google.

aaronwall 13y ago
Nice try. Removing 200 links out of nearly 200,000 links in a holiday week is not a lot of work. In fact, Google has told others waiting to be reconsidered that the wait time is multiple weeks. https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/statuses/418734227228606464 https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/statuses/418734227228606464 Further, some sites which submitted reconsideration requests before RapGenius was penalized have not received a response. And in many such cases those other sites: had far fewer links, removed a far greater quantity of links, disavowed a far greater quantity of links & were involved in something that was nowhere near as overt/intentional on the behalf of the webmaster (I've seen cases where the notices came after a payday loan hacker mixed in someone else's sites with their own links to create cover for their work)
- unreal37 13y ago
  Not to argue with Aaron Wall on an SEO topic, but you read the same article I did. There were 200,000 total links to Rap Genius and most of them were legit. Only a small subset analyzed ended up being suspicious. They got 200 webmasters to remove their links, a few didn't, and the rest ended up being "site scrapers" who steal other people's sites. They just added those to disavow. Seems like they acted very quickly to rectify every suspicious link they could find. But yes, they got special treatment in having the manual penalty removed after only a few days. But it's a legitimately popular site. You'd expect Google to do that since its harming Google's own users during the penalty.
- blumkvist 13y ago
  A very well known and funded business gets preferential treatment. BOO-HOO. Do you think Bill Gates waits on a line at the bank? At the mayor's office? Anywhere at all? In real life if you are powerful, you get respect. There is no such thing as fairness. It's a paradigm of the feeble minded. Most likely a defense mechanism - "look guys, he cheated on the exam, let's tell the teacher!".

bonemachine 13y ago

But if they post clearly defined limits and penalties, then that brings them into the territory of offering a "terms of service" for which they can potentially be sued. So on many levels, keeping it vague and saying simply, in so many words "just be good, don't do anything abusive" like many services do for high-volume APIs (e.g. YouTube, last I checked) -- makes for a pretty good, common-sense fit in this case. It also puts the emphasis were it should be (in my view): not on "don't do X or Y, OR ELSE" but on "look, just be ethical, and use your head, please." It's just too bad for RG that they didn't head Google gentle and clearly (enough) worded advice, first time around.

unreal37 13y ago

Banning Rap Genius also made Google look bad. I bet 100,000s of people search Google for "rap genius get lucky" and similar searches every day, and Google was not displaying the results they clearly wanted. In this case, the Google search result page was clearly "worse" for the ban. Google harmed itself also in this ban. Which does not happen when they ban your herb garden equipment website.

aaronwall 13y ago
It looks as brand related searches were not that significant until the Google penalty happened. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius%2C%20rap%20genius&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=rapgenius%2C%20rap%20... According to Compete.com about 5% of their searches were brand-related queries https://app.compete.com/website/rapgenius.com/ https://app.compete.com/website/rapgenius.com/ SimilarWeb also shows most their top queries were unbranded http://www.similarweb.com/website/rapgenius.com http://www.similarweb.com/website/rapgenius.com Alexa puts the branded-traffic number closer to 2% http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rapgenius.com (All these tools have errors, but sites like Amazon.com or eBay are more like 15% to 25%+ on the branded traffic front http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ebay.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ebay.com ).

pmarca 13y ago

Do you have any evidence "VC connections" had anything to do with anything? Or are you just making shit up?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
pmarca 13y ago
OK then, I'll just put you down for "making shit up".

jyothi 13y ago

It is digital and everything can be traced back - almost. But it is still the world of rich and famous. A similar & more severe penalty was lifted off the most popular Indian ecommerce site - flipkart. I remember meeting their head of marketing in 2011 who had no idea of the penalty which hit the site probably 2009-10. As a user, yes I would like this site to rank up just so RG fans are saying they like RG result in google. But it is so unfair Google sends cryptic messages on webmaster for reconsideration requests but can entertain a direct call and lift off penalty. The least Google could do is to be transparent (fairness is hard)