This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.)
Furthermore, while links in twitter might not pass link juice they most certainly influence search rankings, whether its personalized search, or actual algorithms that take into consideration social signals.
The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant?
You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?
Very childish indeed, it was not an apology at all but a 'they're doing it too' kind of post. I've seen this type of childish behavior on a couple occasions with them (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo )... I'm quite surprised they decided take this approach.
Edit: mirror, since I'm betting the text will be modified soon considering the reactions here. http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp
You are very misinformed if you think these strategies do not work. They are a necessity for a startup in very high competition niches.
Take a look at the source of the very reputable: www.usatoday.com/sports/ and search for "NFL Tickets". Blatant link buying by vivid seats. SeatGeek does this all over the place as well. When you have really strong competitors buying links like this and getting away with it--it's the only way to compete.
In my experience Google has never penalized a competitor for doing this in my niche, therefore to compete I have to do it as well.
What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent compared to a lot of what is going on out there.
You would have them be "penalized up the wazoo" because they didn't apologize in the way you would have preferred? Talk about being unreasonably punitive. I would hope that making an example out of somebody is not a formal strategy in search engine ranking. Instead, be rational and penalize them in proportion to the degree to which they cheat, just like everyone else.
> You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?
When you know your competition is playing dirty, you can join them or choose to rise above. There are legitimate arguments for both. They chose to play dirty, and I wouldn't be surprised if this weakened their position in the long term
1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective.
2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play.
3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions.
1. If Google would penalize their own sites for link schemes (i.e. Chrome) done by third party agencies, certainly they should for Rap Genius. This isn't about whats the best site, this is about maintaining credibility in their index. The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine.
2. Gaming SEO is attractive to almost everybody. Google needs to make it so painful to get caught, that people won't bother risking it in the future. The way I see it is...even if Googles algorithms havent caught up just yet to surface the best quality content, they will eventually, why not speed up the process of meeting them in the middle and focus on legit link acquisition and traffic acquisition strategies...
3. I have no opinions about Rap Genius or their founders, I think their actions deserve a massive penalty...let them run ppc for those long tail lyric lines, I doubt those clicks cost more than a nickel. Let them clean up their act, and go through the channels to request a reinclusion in the index.
The game is the game is a poor excuse. give me $15mm and a site like Rap Genius and I'll get it outranking everybody in the space in 9 months, with only legit strategies.
I have to agree that rapgenius has a great product but their "juvenile and occasionally offensive" demeanor tends to overshadow this. Would love to see them turn their image around but I'm not sure how likely that is. I've always wondered if that is a front they put on to relate to their user base. But then again I love rapgenius and I don't see it as being effective at all.
Is songmeanings spammy at all? They didn't even have ads for the longest time, and they don't do crappy a-dozen-pop-unders like other sites these days.
My problem is when companies think that "do everything we can for <metric> while staying just inside (and maybe a little outside) the boundaries we're given" and "do what we can for <metric> in line with our business values" are the same thing.
A company that I would support would look at the link tactic and say, "damn, that's anti-consumer, anti-business, and pretty shady all around. Let's build our site traffic by making our content better and working with Google to figure out ways to improve our site's searchability."
I agree. I too, am occasionally perturbed when these "Silicon Valley" types show up to meeting without a suit and tie and wearing their "hipster" beards.
I can't tell if Hacker News hates African-American culture, or just white boys who take part in it. If they were annotating Opera Librettas and spoke in Victorian English, I'm sure HN would love them.
It's not like they are complete posers. They got investment from Nas.
I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get significant organic Google traffic.
The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance.
Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too.
I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people.
No. This is a lie. Let's compare their original email [0] to their apology. While we're at it, let's look at their logical fallacies.
For example, compare Rap Genius’ (RG's) annotated edition of Justin Bieber's new hit single "Heartbreaker" – which dozens of Bieber fans have annotated with details of his break up with Selena Gomez – to AZLyrics’ version of the same
This is a false clause [1]. Nobody is doubting RG's content is superior. If anything, better content would be a reason not to engage in blackhat SEO.
Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
We don’t do this.
That is, links shared on Twitter may give temporary traffic to fan sites, but not long-term link juice.
Yet, in your email to bloggers, you promised to
get you MASSIVE traffic
Well which one is it, temporary traffic or massive traffic? This is a direct contradiction.
With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:
Again, lyrics sites or shady. They also don't raise VC money from Andreessen Horowitz. You'll be held to a higher standard, and rightfully so, if you're truly hoping to become more than a lyrics site. This is bandwagon fallacy [2].
Interesting point, write a controversial article, get love link love then link out to your money page (ranking lyrics for Bieber must be a goldmine...)
RapGenius != Lyrics site
Lyrics site != text annotation site
Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO != apology
If an internet user searches for "Coldplay Yellow lyrics" he/she should be provided with a lyrics website (e.g. AZLyrics) by the search engine. If I search for "Coldplay Yellow annotations" I would like to go to an annotations website like RapGenius. That's what I expect from Google.
If RapGenius wants to grow on the back of a the lyrics searches with dodgy SEO tactics, and wants to win both on the lyrics and annotations SERP they will not be providing users with what they want.
RapGenius is certainly a lyrics site. Why should the user be brought to AZLyrics when RapGenius provides the same content (lyrics) as well as annotations?
I really want to like rap genius but I have a few basic beefs:
1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes.
2. The "click" to translate" thing is really annoying & tough to read the full song. I feel like a side by side annotation would work better.
3. It's not as clean as other lyrics sites. Sure other ones are spammy - but they give me exactly what I'm looking for.
From a conceptual side of things - I really like what Rap Genius is trying to do. However, the little things like the ones I mentioned above make me looking for other alternatives.
I certainly found what they did distasteful. Their non-apology makes me lose tremendous respect for a company whose product I sincerely like and frequently use. As other people mentioned, they come off as whiny children -- "but Sally did it first!"
At the same time, I recognize that they might have just pulled off something really smart. If they had came out and said, "hey, Google, you should do something about our competition, they cheat" as a blog post, it might have got some attention but most people would write it off as "yea, who doesn't use SEO." Instead, they generated a publicity storm; provoked Google; then, pointed out that, to be consistent, everybody should be punished according to the severity of the offenses. RapGenius being the least severe offender comes out on top, and they still have the best product.
I am more inclined to believe they just fucked up than they actually thought about things from this game-theoretic perspective. Misquoting Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to genius that which can be adequately be explained by luck." Moreover, I don't know how much the loss of my respect and that of people like me will cost them, but as a startup it could be expensive.
> is to find blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy and ask them to link pages on Rap Genius that are relevant to their posts.
So, this is just a lie, right? The original thing on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658] makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy'.
So they're just plain lying, right?
[I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]
So I think there is a key takeaway for the RapGenius guys here, and it has nothing to do with Google, SEO, or their tactics.
The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (which is perceived to be negative) and that then affects people's opinions about whether they support or don't support RapGenius in this matter.
In short; quit being douchebags, it's not helping your case, your site, or your relationship with the community. All publicity is not good publicity.
Nope. Companies being in the news at all for any non-person-harming event is good. It's like display advertising to reinforce name recognition.
The name of the company is "rapgenius." They have a huge ambition, but they don't see how limited they are. Example: There's a radio station in Atlanta whose tagline is "All the hits, with none of the rap." (read: "none of that black music") They aren't a general purpose site. They are a rowdy manipulative bunch who are being stochastically abrasive in the hopes of finding a large enough group of people to like them.
Call it Lean Marketing: be loud and insulting as often as possible until you find enough of an exploitable niche where you fit in. (Turns out their first exploitable niche of "annotated rap lyrics" wasn't nearly big enough. They need more rubes to exploit now.)
I agree that these guys are huge tools. Sad thing is the majority of their uses probably don't fall within the tech community, so their negative image within tech won't really hurt them. Most people who use their site won't ever know who the founders are. The VC's backing them don't care if they are insufferable, they just want that money. Traffic = money, if they can generate the traffic, they get funding.
Ya that seemed really unprofessional. It goes the way of nasty politics. Not matter how screwed up your competitors are, its a cheapshot to point it out, especially in a message trying to justify your own evil doings.
These guys knew exactly what they were doing. Nice fake pr apology trying to trick your users into thinking you are clean. Example of anyone can get addicted to bad tactics and $ coming in. But you need to remember to not get a lot of PR and do grey tactics at the same time.
This is a pretty half-hearted apology. All that has been proven here is that they knew exactly what they were doing the whole time. Additionally, I think they are doing themselves a disservice by comparing themselves to websites like AZLyrics, Metrolyrics etc, because those sites are not even in the same league as RapGenius in terms of quality of content, and it does not serve to justify their actions anyway.
Disclaimer: I use RapGenius every day and will continue to do so, unless they continue down this Metrolyrics-esque road.
As someone who has a client of mine who's been wrongly affected by Google's search update recently (because of inadvertent toxic backlinks), I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
[+] [-] davemel37|12 years ago|reply
The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant?
You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?
[+] [-] Goopplesoft|12 years ago|reply
Edit: mirror, since I'm betting the text will be modified soon considering the reactions here. http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp
[+] [-] ripberge|12 years ago|reply
Take a look at the source of the very reputable: www.usatoday.com/sports/ and search for "NFL Tickets". Blatant link buying by vivid seats. SeatGeek does this all over the place as well. When you have really strong competitors buying links like this and getting away with it--it's the only way to compete.
In my experience Google has never penalized a competitor for doing this in my niche, therefore to compete I have to do it as well.
What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent compared to a lot of what is going on out there.
[+] [-] pvnick|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheetjs|12 years ago|reply
When you know your competition is playing dirty, you can join them or choose to rise above. There are legitimate arguments for both. They chose to play dirty, and I wouldn't be surprised if this weakened their position in the long term
[+] [-] seiji|12 years ago|reply
Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?
[+] [-] newnewnew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gmisra|12 years ago|reply
1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective.
2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play.
3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions.
As they say, the game is the game.
[+] [-] davemel37|12 years ago|reply
2. Gaming SEO is attractive to almost everybody. Google needs to make it so painful to get caught, that people won't bother risking it in the future. The way I see it is...even if Googles algorithms havent caught up just yet to surface the best quality content, they will eventually, why not speed up the process of meeting them in the middle and focus on legit link acquisition and traffic acquisition strategies...
3. I have no opinions about Rap Genius or their founders, I think their actions deserve a massive penalty...let them run ppc for those long tail lyric lines, I doubt those clicks cost more than a nickel. Let them clean up their act, and go through the channels to request a reinclusion in the index.
The game is the game is a poor excuse. give me $15mm and a site like Rap Genius and I'll get it outranking everybody in the space in 9 months, with only legit strategies.
[+] [-] jlebron2|12 years ago|reply
[EDIT] grammar
[+] [-] seiji|12 years ago|reply
Is songmeanings spammy at all? They didn't even have ads for the longest time, and they don't do crappy a-dozen-pop-unders like other sites these days.
[+] [-] rmrfrmrf|12 years ago|reply
A company that I would support would look at the link tactic and say, "damn, that's anti-consumer, anti-business, and pretty shady all around. Let's build our site traffic by making our content better and working with Google to figure out ways to improve our site's searchability."
[+] [-] mcgwiz|12 years ago|reply
I've always found them reasonably professional, particularly their evidence-driven handling of the Heroku load distribution debacle.
http://news.rapgenius.com/James-somers-herokus-ugly-secret-l...
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
1. rapgenius is probably the least ...
2. If...
3. But...
As they say...
= So, its not that complicated. I think you got the main ponts.
[+] [-] nemothekid|12 years ago|reply
I agree. I too, am occasionally perturbed when these "Silicon Valley" types show up to meeting without a suit and tie and wearing their "hipster" beards.
[+] [-] newnewnew|12 years ago|reply
It's not like they are complete posers. They got investment from Nas.
[+] [-] ripberge|12 years ago|reply
The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance.
Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too.
I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people.
Google, your system is totally broken.
[+] [-] scottrblock|12 years ago|reply
[0]- http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed
[1]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause
[2]- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|12 years ago|reply
Looks like an apology but is a huge SEO push.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|12 years ago|reply
Interestingly enough - they weren't very specific about getting penalized and/or when it happened.
[+] [-] onedev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefallsman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antr|12 years ago|reply
If RapGenius wants to grow on the back of a the lyrics searches with dodgy SEO tactics, and wants to win both on the lyrics and annotations SERP they will not be providing users with what they want.
[+] [-] wetmore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelrunyon|12 years ago|reply
1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes.
2. The "click" to translate" thing is really annoying & tough to read the full song. I feel like a side by side annotation would work better.
3. It's not as clean as other lyrics sites. Sure other ones are spammy - but they give me exactly what I'm looking for.
From a conceptual side of things - I really like what Rap Genius is trying to do. However, the little things like the ones I mentioned above make me looking for other alternatives.
[+] [-] systematical|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lfender6445|12 years ago|reply
Who cares how the guys act, they made a a great product that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject.
That's a lot more than most of the users here can say.
[+] [-] pathdependent|12 years ago|reply
I certainly found what they did distasteful. Their non-apology makes me lose tremendous respect for a company whose product I sincerely like and frequently use. As other people mentioned, they come off as whiny children -- "but Sally did it first!"
At the same time, I recognize that they might have just pulled off something really smart. If they had came out and said, "hey, Google, you should do something about our competition, they cheat" as a blog post, it might have got some attention but most people would write it off as "yea, who doesn't use SEO." Instead, they generated a publicity storm; provoked Google; then, pointed out that, to be consistent, everybody should be punished according to the severity of the offenses. RapGenius being the least severe offender comes out on top, and they still have the best product.
I am more inclined to believe they just fucked up than they actually thought about things from this game-theoretic perspective. Misquoting Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to genius that which can be adequately be explained by luck." Moreover, I don't know how much the loss of my respect and that of people like me will cost them, but as a startup it could be expensive.
Regardless, this has been fascinating to watch.
[+] [-] angryasian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keltex|12 years ago|reply
You can report them to Google here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
[+] [-] jrochkind1|12 years ago|reply
So, this is just a lie, right? The original thing on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658] makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy'.
So they're just plain lying, right?
[I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]
[+] [-] onedev|12 years ago|reply
The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (which is perceived to be negative) and that then affects people's opinions about whether they support or don't support RapGenius in this matter.
In short; quit being douchebags, it's not helping your case, your site, or your relationship with the community. All publicity is not good publicity.
[+] [-] seiji|12 years ago|reply
Nope. Companies being in the news at all for any non-person-harming event is good. It's like display advertising to reinforce name recognition.
The name of the company is "rapgenius." They have a huge ambition, but they don't see how limited they are. Example: There's a radio station in Atlanta whose tagline is "All the hits, with none of the rap." (read: "none of that black music") They aren't a general purpose site. They are a rowdy manipulative bunch who are being stochastically abrasive in the hopes of finding a large enough group of people to like them.
Call it Lean Marketing: be loud and insulting as often as possible until you find enough of an exploitable niche where you fit in. (Turns out their first exploitable niche of "annotated rap lyrics" wasn't nearly big enough. They need more rubes to exploit now.)
[+] [-] Throwadev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newnewnew|12 years ago|reply
Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low
Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know
Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo?
http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-99-problems-lyrics
[+] [-] ErikAugust|12 years ago|reply
I thought snitching wasn't cool in the hip hop community?
[+] [-] nivla|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbobby|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drsim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mrbill|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] milkshakes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shawnz|12 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I use RapGenius every day and will continue to do so, unless they continue down this Metrolyrics-esque road.
[+] [-] mbesto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radicalbyte|12 years ago|reply