Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter-to-google-about-rap-genius-seo-lyrics

by iball • 13 years ago

148 159 13 years ago

news.rapgenius.com

mwcurry• 13 years ago

Can anyone post the original controversy? The letter mentions it but doesn't link to it.

jlebron22• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658

julespitt2• 13 years ago

Jinx!

julespitt2• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658

Destitute2• 13 years ago

I've never read anything more douchey in my life. Are they trying to appeal to the "hip-hop" crowd with the feigned street talk?

ryes• 13 years ago

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.

drsim• 13 years ago

Oh dear. The schoolkid gets caught and says 'yeah, but Jim did such and such that's worse'.

keltex• 13 years ago

These are just paid links. It falls under the category "exchanging goods or services for links". The "service" is a tweet or post on facebook.

You can report them to Google here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks

milkshakes• 13 years ago

what a joke of a non-apology. i hope the search quality team makes an example out of them.

AndrewKemendo• 13 years ago

Well played. The Bieber song linked in the first paragraph is the one they wanted pushed in the first place to get their page rank up.

Looks like an apology but is a huge SEO push.

thefallsman2• 13 years ago

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...)

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

Pushing traffic to both the Bieber page & the Beyonce page. Both HUGE numbers of search terms.

Interestingly enough - they weren't very specific about getting penalized and/or when it happened.

onedev2• 13 years ago

This is hilarious. They thought no one would notice. I have no opinion on any of this but I found this detail amusingly ironic.

davemel3711• 13 years ago

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?

Goopplesoft• 13 years ago

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

look_lookatme4• 13 years ago

Childishness seems ingrained in this company's DNA.

jimsilverman• 13 years ago

a textbook examples of the dreaded "bro-grammer"

sheetjs• 13 years ago

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

davemel3711• 13 years ago

There's always a choice, but in this case... They chose WRONG. Their strategy most likely wouldnt even work if they didnt get caught. lots of exact match anchor text links around content that is completely irrelevant at the bottom of a blog post, without social sharing matching their backlink profile. (yes, search engines can look at your social sharing pattern with your backlinks and see if something is getting artificial backlinks.)

They chose the short long way... They should have chosen the long short way.

ripberge4• 13 years ago

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.

antr2• 13 years ago

Although I don't agree that "What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent", I do have to agree on the general (black) SEO tactics that startups do, and even blue chips do.

This is my first hand experience: I was contacted by an "SEO Consultant" who wanted to publish an article in one my sites for $40. I went along, exchanged a few emails, and managed to get the "article" this company wanted to publish.

Bottom line was that they wanted to place link's to Tesco's LED bulbs site:

    Text: decorative and useful living room accessory
    URL: http://www.tesco.com/direct/home-garden/lighting/cat3376614.cat

pkfrank• 13 years ago

Is there a legitimate way to "tattle" on competitors that are blatantly abusing SEO practices?

davemel3711• 13 years ago

I didn't say buying links doesn't work. I said asking for a series of exact match anchor text links, on the bottom of a blog post on a site that is likely irrelevant, is very unlikely to work.

More importantly, any strategy that is against Googles quality guidelines that works today, probably wont work forever, or even for another several months. The pain and suffering of getting slapped by google is much too intense to justify the short term gains.

Matt Cutts himself said recently that the best way to discourage spammers is not just to hurt their bottom line, but to "Break Their Spirits." http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-search-spa...

DanBC• 13 years ago

In my experience Google has never penalized a competitor for doing this in my niche,

Just checking but have you reported the competitors?

douglee650• 13 years ago

it's not about right or wrong, good or bad.

it's about traffic. thus spake zara.

seiji5• 13 years ago

This site should be penalized up the wazoo.

Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?

minimaxir3• 13 years ago

Since Rap Genius is a YC company, that is unlikely.

This also isn't the first time a YC company has had ethical issues called out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

pvnick• 13 years ago

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.

davemel3711• 13 years ago

No, I would penalize them for building spammy backlinks the same way Google penalized their own chrome site.

The apology seems to indicate that they only think they did something grayhatish. In reality it was the worst kind of link spam...buying links.

obstacle13• 13 years ago

I didn't see any inference from OP that because of this apology the site should be penalized. Perhaps OP thinks that the extremely shady spam tactics the site clearly uses in themselves deserve penalization up the wazoo.

newnewnew5• 13 years ago

In other words, schadenfreude > public good

thefallsman2• 13 years ago

This seems like a good SEO method - point out that you were doing something extremely minor in violation of Google's guidelines, then point out that everyone else breaks most of the guidelines. All the same time do this in a niche that is known for spam, all the while hoping that Google will read it and manually slap everyone else, giving you a better overall ranking.

rralian• 13 years ago

What they did doesn't seem "extremely minor" to me. It's about as textbook as you can get as an example of something that will piss off google. Reminds me of all the grey/black methods "facebook apps" (remember them?) would use to trick people into spamming their friends with invites. In my experience, this stuff can work in the short-run of maybe two or three years... and maybe that's all that a lot of startups really care about... flipping a company in a couple years. But if you want to build a lasting business (not sure that's the goal of RapGenius), you build a service that provides real value to people that they gladly talk about to their friends. And you approach SEO by providing interesting, fresh, rich, easily-indexable, accessible content. Not by seeding thousands of Bieber links back to your site.

In my experience the people who do these grey/black things just can't seem to flip that switch to producing value... they look for the angle, how they can parse the terms to their advantage and claim ignorance, and they cannot get out of "lawyer-think." You'll have a hard time convincing them they did anything wrong.

As for calling out their competitors, I actually don't have a problem with that. They're going to be under a microscope from now on and will otherwise be at a disadvantage. Their only reasonable course is to try to level the playing field.

Anyway, forgive the rant. I find these types of tactics gross and I'm glad they're getting penalized.

shawnz• 13 years ago

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.

yeukhon2• 13 years ago

Can someone actually explain or try to convince me why paid links are bad? What about non-paid SEO links? I am not familiar with the arguments.

Say I am running a blog and I am asking my friends to include my blog link in everyone one of his links regardless what. And we are just doing this to get each other noticed. Say he's writing a C++ tutorial and I will also cook up a Python equivalent and say "hey guys if you want to check out the Python one, go check out my friend's blog here."

It's almost like me asking someone to promote my Youtube Channel (hey guys please subscribe X's new channel) in the video and in description.

mbesto2• 13 years ago

This: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks

revelation• 13 years ago

Your scenario isn't exactly what happened here. Rather, how would you feel if your friend asked you to link 10 Justin Bieber songs in your Python tutorial?

yeukhon2• 13 years ago

But two site owners decided that they can benefit each other if they provide links to each other's site.

As I said, I am asking my friend to link my Python's and I link his C++.

I can treat him a lunch when I get some ad revenue later. Or just a bro hug.

I understand it may not actually be showing what is happening here, but there is some gray area I want to explore.

I can also be a celebrity and every week I feature a couple links showing what my friends and my other celebrity friends are doing or writing or making. I may or may not get $$. Maybe just to be friendly (think Youtube, how channel owners help other owners...) Will that violate Google's ToS? I am famous and so helping a few people out shouldn't hurt, right?

smackfu4• 13 years ago

It's because using links to rank search results is only valid if the links are organic. Once people start paying for links, now the existence of the link is only indicating who paid for links, not who has good content. That's why Google penalizes them.

ripberge4• 13 years ago

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.

Google, your system is totally broken.

diydsp• 13 years ago

As massive as it is, I can see Google's needs moving more towards the mainstream. Finding results beyond the first page will fall to other search mechanisms as their inertia develops into a... character.

For example, it's hard to search for certain medical information because of so many pop songs clouding out results for "how the heart beats," etc. There will be more and more aliasing and hacking through keywords to distinguish between pop uses of heart and medical uses of heart until eventually people will learn which search mechanism to use for what purpose. Google will most likely ride the mainstream into the sunset, the Sears of our generation.

davemel3711• 13 years ago

Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius.

There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem.

The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.

mbesto2• 13 years ago

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.

gmisra2• 13 years ago

This is complicated.

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.

jlebron22• 13 years ago

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.

[EDIT] grammar

victorhooi• 13 years ago

I suspect it is a front.

I don't know much about them, but I did see this video from earlier this year, where they don't seem to be "in character":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvrWdfEUHg

You compare that to some of their others, and you get the impression they're smart (if a little weird).

yogo• 13 years ago

It definitely comes off as a front. That's ironic because a lot of rap/hip hop is all about "I'm the real thing with the money, cars, women, etc. and the others are fake" lol.

davemel3711• 13 years ago

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.

gmisra2• 13 years ago

The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine.

If you believe this doesn't already happen, then you and I must be using different internets. Simply by being selective in which aspects of SEO gaming they chose to address, in what order, and to what extent, they are making editorial decisions. If you're working in an industry where search results are already dominated by low-level SEO manipulation (say, maybe, music lyrics?), are you expected to stand by and let Google be the arbiter of if and when that issue is addressed?

why not speed up the process of meeting them in the middle and focus on legit link acquisition and traffic acquisition strategies...

My guess is that will be the very likely outcome of this whole brouhaha. It would also not come as a surprise to me if this was the goal all along - getting Matt Cutts' attention is hard, until you're doing something wrong.

You seem to know a lot about SEO, definitely more than me. But it feels like you are expressing a criticism that presumes that this behavior has been happening, and has been tolerated, for some time.

drakaal• 13 years ago

Google definitely plays favorites. It is written in to how PageRank works. Some sites are Trusted manually. The distance from those sites is your Page Rank Flow.

Now that we have that settled, and you are looking for a new search engine, let me suggest http://www.plexisearch.com/

It uses a lot less Page Rank style rankings, we don't have to do much delisting since we can usually tell using NLP if a site is any good.

cardine2• 13 years ago

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.

If Google makes it painful to get caught while also doing a poor job algorithmically catching people, it just incentivizes people to do "pump and dump" type sites where they use blackhat tactics to get a lyric site to the top of Google and then rinse and repeat when they get caught.

The most optimal way to make money with SEO right now is to rank quickly with blackhat SEO tactics and then when you get penalized you create a new site and start over again. This means the competitive serps are always in a state of flux as there is a revolving door of short term sites.

This hurts legit sites - they have a lot to lose by breaking Google's policies so even if they offer a better experience they'll be outranked by short term sites that don't care about Google's policies since they expect to only last half a year anyways.

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.

Give me $20,000 and I'll outrank a "clean" $15mm budget since I won't be barred from doing the things that actually work. It might only survive 6 months, but I'll make a positive ROI and I'll repeat the process again.

seiji5• 13 years ago

the least spammy lyrics site on the internet

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.

girvo3• 13 years ago

I loved songmeanings back in the day. A lot of cool insider info on bands I liked, explaining stuff in a way line-by-line annotation doesn't, but they never took advantage of that and stagnated IMO.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

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."

newnewnew5• 13 years ago

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.

look_lookatme4• 13 years ago

I don't particularly care about librettas or victorian english, but the shit these guys say is pretty absurd.

  In any case this weekend we are going to have them play some heads-up
  poker, a set of tennis, a drinking contest - a winner gwan emerge
  (Ilan) and you girls gonna see wassup. If you wanna cover these
  "World's Sexiest Startup Man" events you are welcome - we will get you
  soused up you gonna feel nice.
  
  Let me cut to the chase: Ilan's sexy is $15M Zach's is $10M YOU FEEL
  ME? You know what I'm saying now? You feel me..

- http://valleywag.gawker.com/rap-genius-incites-unsolicited-s...

obstacle13• 13 years ago

Wait, what? How do you get from "juvenile and offensive" to "hates African-American culture"? That's your own bias at play, there, bud. Loud and clear.

sejje• 13 years ago

Have you seen these guys? They don't seem to be taking part in African American culture to me.

They just seem like massive, massive toolbags.

I find them extremely distasteful. They're trying way too hard.

nswanberg2• 13 years ago

If they were annotating Opera Librettas

My tastes are pretty middlebrow and all I could think to search for was Non piu andrai, which I couldn't find, but as far as poetry goes they've got works like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Ode to a Grecian Urn, and for literature they've got Joyce's amazing short story (and set at Christmastime) The Dead, The Cask of Amontillado, and with annotations by the founder Mahbod, War and Peace (he also says one of his favorite books is Nicholas Nickleby, which is not really an obvious choice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo#t=1018).

001sky2• 13 years ago

This is complicated.

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• 13 years ago

juvenile and occasionally offensive

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.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

I think parent may be referring to the casual rape jokes the RG guys occasionally make.

mcgwiz3• 13 years ago

What do find "juvenile" or "offensive" about them? The rap subject matter they cater to?

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...

smackfu4• 13 years ago

Did you see the original email that prompted this whole thing? It sounds like a frat boy. http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed

subsection1h• 13 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

I'm kind of disappointed that it didn't start with "Yoo waddup Googz!"

lfender6445• 13 years ago

That is hsyterical! I suppose this is the kind of behavior everyone is up in arms about as being obnoxious or unprofessional but I love it.

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.

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

"that pulls in a strong majority of traffic for a given subject."

Not anymore now that Google brought the ranking hammer down on them.

scottrblock• 13 years ago

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].

[0] http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed

[1] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause

[2] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon

mrbill• 13 years ago

The "but.. but.. look at what these other sites are doing!" stuff just comes across as bad and childish.

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

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.

systematical2• 13 years ago

Yeah I noted in a comment how terrible the UI is. It's garbage really.

Axsuul• 13 years ago

Heh, the links to their competitor sites are dofollow.

undoware• 13 years ago

It's the same as when SourceForge started doing drive-by installs, and the cure is the same:

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

ErikAugust2• 13 years ago

While I am a fan of the RapGenius product, can all the superfluous crap just go away?

If I was investing in RG or advising them, I'd tell them to put a muzzle on it. They have a good product, stop screwing it up.

mikeg83• 13 years ago

That would probably be the best advice they could ever receive. Never used the product but after watching a couple of the founders speak, seeing an email they send, and then reading this "apology", I would never use RG.

justinbeaver• 13 years ago

The chart at the bottom is the most interesting part of this blog post.

Rap Genius has raised $15M from a group of premier investors including Andreesen Horowitz and yet their comps (according to Rap Genius, themselves!) are a bunch of black hat, spammy link farms containing music lyrics.

seiji5• 13 years ago

Growth at all costs. Concepts of "right" or "moral" don't exist. Only money exists. They're above the rules. They have insider connections. Untouchable, yo.

ErikAugust2• 13 years ago

"With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:"

I thought snitching wasn't cool in the hip hop community?

nivla• 13 years ago

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.

mikeg83• 13 years ago

Well said

rbobby• 13 years ago

RatGenius

eric970• 13 years ago

I love how at the end, they're all like "hey, our competitors do it too!"

dpweb• 13 years ago

Apology/excuses strategy is the worst, can't even stomach reading their whole post.

mikeg83• 13 years ago

completely agreed.

onedev2• 13 years ago

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.

Throwadev2• 13 years ago

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.

seiji5• 13 years ago

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.)

newnewnew5• 13 years ago

"Son do you know why I'm stopping you fo?"

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

Throwadev2• 13 years ago

#3: "3) Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links We don’t do this."

That is a flat out lie. Maybe it wasn't large scale, but this is exactly what they were doing by asking people to put the links back to their site to try to rank for Bieber lyrics.

rch• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but this all seems like the fox-post-journal-fox loop to me. They are providing commentary on a controversy created by them, about them, revolving around link traffic. It should generate some 'news' content for their site, that is also about their site. They've even managed to work in a blog post about Google's TOS and how not to violate them that some people should probably read. I'd expect it to add up to a traffic bump.

pathdependent• 13 years ago

This just got more interesting.

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• 13 years ago

they offered no proof and used a lame excuse for justification.

antr2• 13 years ago

    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.

wetmore• 13 years ago

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?

yelnatz• 13 years ago

They are a lyrics site, yes.

But the whole idea and vision of RapGenius (and why their investors bit) was because of their goal of "annotating the whole internet."

They don't want to be just a lyrics site, they want their annotating paradigm to be the norm with every web page you go to.

Unfortunately, for now, they are just a lyrics site... with annotations.

jrochkind12• 13 years ago

man, these guys really like their open letters, their sense of entitlement, and their not knowing what they're doing.

westi• 13 years ago

While they are fixing the bad SEO they should fix the spam too :)

e.g. http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marria...

jrochkind12• 13 years ago

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.]

radicalbyte2• 13 years ago

To go off on a slight tangent: WTF have they done to their links? They open crappy preview windows, totally breaking the UX in the process?

cdelsolar• 13 years ago

you don't know what Rap Genius does, huh?

radicalbyte2• 13 years ago

Ahhh, a Bieber fansite. That explains it :)

minimaxir3• 13 years ago

SEO is more important than UX, apparently/unfortunately.

smackfu4• 13 years ago

They aren't really links. They are annotations that include a link. This makes more sense in the context of the rest of the site, where any random word in lyrics may be annotated, and you don't really want to click on a word and be sent to a site instead of seeing a popup that explains what that lyric means.

octatone2• 13 years ago

The chart at the end needs a key, I have no idea what I am looking at. Should be on http://wtfviz.net/

elwell• 13 years ago

If you click on it an annotation will appear (albeit, below the margin; scroll down).

chasing• 13 years ago

Well, unlike every other communiqué of theirs, this doesn't at all sound like it was penned by J-Roc of "Trailer Park Boys."

They must've been hacked.

loceng• 13 years ago

Anyone else notice the magic (black) hat they used in their matrix? :P

stephenitis• 13 years ago

I as a developer can appreciate the relatively quick response and post caughtya transparency.

jrockway• 13 years ago

I would probably not write my open letter to a US-based company in the middle of one of the biggest holidays of the year.

Destitute2• 13 years ago

For some reason, the "Wahhhh, but they do it toooOoooOo" is what I would expect from these three.

andrewhillman• 13 years ago

I guess they wont be launching SEOgenius.com anytime soon. All jokes aside, these kinds of actions are the result of pressure to get big fast. You can complain about what these competitor lyric sites are doing, but the truth is that some of these guys are the true growth hackers. They actually employ 1-2 elements that are 100% white-hat and I am positive it helps them achieve great rankings... aside for being around longer. It's not obvious but they have implemented some smart SEO strategies. But here's the thing... They learned these strategies by understanding how random users use their service. Nothing wrong with this. Perhaps, rapgenius should look a little closer and interact with competitor sites if they are frustrated with the competition.

systematical2• 13 years ago

I actually think there site sucks. Like really bad. The idea is great, but frankly I could develop a better UI in less than a month. I'm not saying this to tout myself, I'm saying this because the UI is that bad. Seriously, it looks like something I would have created in my first 2 years of programming.

jarnix• 13 years ago

Maybe you should fix your links in your letter. They all point to news.rg.com that does not display your CSS.

gscott• 13 years ago

Google's policies are counter-intuitive to how the World Wide Web was designed. You are supposed to link to other sites that you like and you want them to link to you as well. Google's policies lead to a non-linking which means that Google does all of the associating in their database to find which sites are like each other and should be grouped together, which pushes out development of new search engines because there will not be a link profile for other engines to use, thereby furthering Google's monopoly.

icedchai• 13 years ago

Rap Genius is how I know we're in a tech bubble.

mcgwiz3• 13 years ago

They make no mention of asking the unnatural link publishers to take the links down (such links can be found in Google Webmaster Tools), or of using the Disavow Links tool to tell Google they do not want anything to do with those links.

Lessons learned: Better to be safe than sorry. Know your tools. Know your partners.

lemming• 13 years ago

I notice that they are actually capable of writing English like a normal person when it benefits them.

ysekand• 13 years ago

I just published a short post with some data http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius

vtempest• 13 years ago

I AM TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT RAPGENIUS Even more so than hearing about Kanye Wests latest antics

duked• 13 years ago

". We believe that any unbiased user would prefer the Rap Genius version over the alternatives "

I'm actually unbiased and prefer the alternative. When I'm looking for lyrics I just want lyrics and couldn't care less about the annotation. I'm not saying I'm the norm but saying the "norm" would always go for RapGenius is not fair, at least in my case.

null_ptr• 13 years ago

Why do all their URLs end with "-lyrics"? Because they're SEO spammers that's why.

jaredmck• 13 years ago

Outing all your competition is extremely lame, stop snitching.

Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

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