
Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For Link Schemes - tomlemon
http://searchengineland.com/google-has-officially-penalized-rap-genius-for-link-schemes-180777
======
selmnoo
Tried all of these just now:

    
    
      Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Confident Lyric
      Justin Bieber Heartbreaker Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Memphis Lyrics
      Justin Bieber One Life Lyrics
      Justin Bieber All That Matters Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Hold Tight Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Pyd Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Change Me Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Recovery Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Bad Day Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Roller Coaster Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Lyrics
    

All of these just yesterday were in fact ranked in the upper 5 (very often #1
actually). Rapgenius results are now not even in top _10_.

Most surprisingly, even

    
    
      Justin Bieber Heartbreaker rap genius
    

will not show up on Google results. Wow, that was a swift and harsh response.
The only surefire way to get to a RG site is by doing "*bieber
site:rapgenius.com".

They were using a wide array of questionable SERP optimizing techniques
([http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-
genius](http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius) among
others). One described here is very interesting:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958883).
Apparently that's an old one, but it's first I'm hearing of it. From all of
this, to their rape jokes and everything else in-between, you can't say they
didn't have something like this coming.

~~~
larksimian
Quite frankly not showing me rapgenius results when that's one of the search
terms is idiotic. I guess now I have to remember to go straight to their site
whenever I'm looking up lyrics. I'm glad I at least know about them and I feel
bad for the people that are now going to be trapped in craplyrics.com hell.

I understand and agree with google's desire to punish spammers but their
effort should not have such a major impact on users who obviously know what
they are looking for.

~~~
weixiyen
Just wow. I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other
companies. I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now.

~~~
bushido
_> I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other
companies._

Doubt they intended to penalize them quite this drastically. Its likely that
they algorithm is just being overzealous some keywords being blacklisted.
Quite similar to how the UK porn filters are filtering out Claire Perry, the
most prominent campaigner for the filters[0].

 _> I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now_

The violations are pretty serious and have been for the better part of the
last (half-)decade. RapGenius should have known better. For me the worst was
when the pretty much said "But everyone else is doing it".

Too bad this will obliterate them.

Unintentionally though, going forward RapGenius will be the poster child for
what happens to children on the naughty list.

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the-
best-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the-best-story-
yet-about-the-uks-online-porn-filters/)

------
OmarIsmail
Google giveth, and Google taketh away.

This looks like a -50 penalty. This is both good and bad for Rap Genius.

Good in that it will be temporary: specifically 30 days. This is better than a
fundamental algorithm change like Panda or Penguin because there's no coming
back from those.

The bad is that -50 penalties effectively destroy 90+ percent of your traffic.
It's a very harsh lesson to be taught. You also don't want to have it happen
again because the 2nd time is 60 days, and the 3rd time is permanent.

I don't think RapGenius will be doing something like this again.

From RG's perspective it's also frustrating because they'll see competitors do
scammy things and get away with it. But that's the dual edged sword of such
public personas. With RG getting called out so publicly Google had to do
something about it. It's also good for Google that this penalty is getting a
lot of publicity since it's proving an example to everyone else.

~~~
dpatrick86
Where are you getting this number system from? I've never heard of it until
now.

~~~
nathancahill
-50 is the number of results they were bumped down. If you search "rap genius" you'll find it on the 5th page.

~~~
dpatrick86
Ahh... Thank you for the clarification. :)

------
themgt
My favorite part of this is in the original blog post exposing the scheme,
mahbodmoghadam, RapGenius co-founder/dude-bro in chief, immediately commented
and said "Did you post it??? how about this: attach the HTML to THIS article
and I'll tweet this out for you - that would be META!"

Like scoring an own goal, doing a victory dance, and then sprinting back out
to score another. Just amazing. I wish I could find a violin tiny enough to
appropriately express my sympathy for these clowns.

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

~~~
bhaumik
Mahbod's early growth strategies on Quora:
[http://i.imgur.com/vsnk8V5.png](http://i.imgur.com/vsnk8V5.png)

------
MitziMoto
I agree that Rap Genius should have been penalized here, but so should
literally every other lyrics site on the net. I've done SEO in hyper
competitive spaces in the past and honestly, the system is broken.

Google and Cutts love to preach this "Create value and quality content and
you'll rank high" bullocks but it doesn't work like that. When you have a high
number of well funded competitors who are all playing dirty, there is NO
POSSIBLE WAY to compete with them with white hat tactics. You either play
hardball yourself and risk a ban or you play nice and get creamed in the
SERPs.

It's really a rock | hard place situation in some niches.

Oh, and I just saw the founders made this statement:

"We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They've been really
great, helping us identify changes we need to make, even on Christmas. We’re
working on it as fast as we can, and expect to be back on Google very soon."

WHAT? What makes these guys so special that they actually get _help_ from
Google. I think that pisses me off more than anything. There are a ton of
webmasters out there trying to do the right thing SEO wise who get banned or
penalized but could never, ever, get personal help from Google. We don't even
get the courtesy of knowing _why_ we've been banned most of the time.
(Although to be fair this has gotten much better in GWT).

~~~
johnward
In some highly competitive spaces your competitors will spam links to your
site which eventually leads to negative SEO. Which I don't think Google will
admit exists but it happens.

------
deanclatworthy
Let's not feel sorry for these guys just because they were part of YC. They
were taking part in black-hat practices, which were _clearly_ in breach of
Google's ToS. I expect this penalty to expire eventually, but let this be a
lesson to anyone else thinking about doing the same.

~~~
pccampbell
My bigger issue is with the fact that they're able to "negotiate" with Matt
Cutts and team while thousands of other sites don't have that bargaining
power. Started a discussion on this here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169)

~~~
paulrademacher
Why do you think they negotiated at all?

~~~
001sky
Agree, Is there any evidence this happened?

------
OoTheNigerian
Wow.

This is the worst Christmas present possible. Well, Google had no choice and
the apology was not a stellar one (not that it could have mattered).

If I recall correctly, Google once penalized Google Chrome for doing shady SEO
[1]. Although it was not as brutal as this which sends them to the equivalent
of Siberia.

My Questions.

1\. I normally search "<song name> rapgenius". Now, it is no longer on the
first few pages. Is that not against Google's goal of giving the searcher what
(s)he wants?

2\. Probably the only way for RapGenius to counter this would be to go heavy
on AdWords. Is that not a bit conflicted on Google's side?

Hopefully this punishment will not be permanent. I would hope they have
learned to tone things down sometimes.

This may be a lesson in disguise as they would be forced to think of how to
survive without SEO. If they can survive now, they will be doubly badass when
this penalty is lifted.

\--

Edited to include source

[1] [http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-
pag...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-
reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551)

~~~
w1ntermute
> I normally search "<song name> rapgenius". Now, it is no longer on the first
> few pages.

It's not an answer to whether Google is giving users what they want, but you
can just create search engines in Chrome[0] for the sites you search
frequently. Make sure you set a custom shortcut for it that's only one or two
letters. When I want to search Rap Genius, I type 'rg ' (note the space) and I
get this: [http://i.imgur.com/At9KxBr.png](http://i.imgur.com/At9KxBr.png)

I have this for at least 20 different sites, so I almost never use Google if I
know what site I want to search, a prominent exception being if the site's
search really sucks, like reddit. In those cases, I have custom search engines
set up that will search Google without whatever I searched, plus
"site:example.com" appended to it.

You can also hack this functionality to set up shortcuts for frequently
visited sites ('hn' for Hacker News, 'gm' for Gmail, etc.) by creating a
search engine without a '%s' (which is where whatever you search is
substituted in). So I type 'hn', hit Enter, and it takes me to
[http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com)

0:
[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95653?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95653?hl=en)

~~~
rplnt
As well as in firefox and opera (at least The Opera, not that crap they ship
nowadays). And perhaps others.

Edit: That being said, searches on various sites often suck. My default search
engine is Google's Feeling Lucky, so if I want to search and IMDb entry for
example, I just type in `imdb <name of the movie>`. If I'd had imdb as a
keyword for IMDb search, I'd go to the IMDb's search results and would have to
click on the result. With feeling lucky search I end up on the entry directly.
Same goes for Wikipedia and a few others. If I want to see Google results, I
have a keyword for that - g.

~~~
w1ntermute
> If I'd had imdb as a keyword for IMDb search, I'd go to the IMDb's search
> results and would have to click on the result. With feeling lucky search I
> end up on the entry directly.

Right, that's why I, if I were a frequent IMDb user, would have 'imdb' set up
to do an I'm Feeling Lucky search with "site:imdb.com" suffixed to whatever
I'd entered. Pretty much the same as suffixing 'imdb', but the "site:" syntax
ensures that only IMDb results actually show up.

> Same goes for Wikipedia and a few others.

I actually find Wikipedia to be very good about sending me directly to the
page of interest, without having to click through from a search results page.
I use Wikipedia for movie info (rather than IMDb), and it works very well.

------
jere
Excellent. They deserved some coal in their stockings.

>If you go to Google and search for [rap genius], rapgenius.com will not be
found on the first page

That's pretty crazy. Whenever I put up an obscure site, I notice ranking on
the domain happens almost immediately with no effort.

[edit] Holy shit, I didn't realize quite how awful this is. Very often, I
search for "<song name> rapgenius" because I really enjoy the annotations;
that's not even on the first page of results. Making it worse, the first page
(even when searching for a song) contains stories about them making rape jokes
and spamming.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=today+was+a+good+day+rapgeni...](https://www.google.com/search?q=today+was+a+good+day+rapgenius)

~~~
kintamanimatt
5th page for "rapgenius"

There are two lessons here: (1) don't do shady shit, (2) Google should only be
one of many sources of traffic.

~~~
girvo
For lyrics sites, Google is the alpha and the omega. There are no other
traffic sources for that niche.

------
captainmuon
I wonder how many "legitimate" links a site like RapGenius gets. I've never
seen anybody link to them, except maybe in social networks. Similar for the
stackexchange sites. Sometimes people link to good questions from blogs, but a
large portion of links are probably from other stackexchange sites, twitter,
and Jeff Atwood's blog (which is a marvel of SEO and affilate marketing in
itself).

For many of these high quality content silos (for lack of a better word), the
PageRank paradigm seems pretty broken. People don't feel compelled to link to
well-known sites precisely because they are well-ranked. And when they do, it
is in form of viral posts in social networks, which is not really a great
input to determine site quality.

I wouldn't be surprized if Google's real secret algorithm nowadays consists of
millions of special cases maintained by thousands of poorly paid interns.

~~~
jonahx
Are you saying SO questions high google rank is mainly a result of links from
within the SE network?

~~~
captainmuon
No, but I guess e.g. physics.stackexchange.com or judaism.stackexchange.com
benefits a lot from the SE internal links, and I guess for those smaller sites
it _is_ the main source of page rank.

That is, if page rank still works like Google claims. I'm pretty convinced
that there is a lot of manual curation going on. At least for popular terms
and for the first page of results.

------
ddoolin
The sad part is that RG was the most high quality lyrics site I've seen. Their
revenue is going to take a huge dive, much more than their link scheming was
hurting Google (or probably anyone else for that matter).

~~~
captainmuon
Its also sad thay they went about it in such a stupid, stupid way.

They could have built a nice "Link to your favorite lyrics" widget for people
to include in their "homepages". Make the appearance customizable, jumble the
HTML, and include some stock bla bla to make it "individual" and to appeal to
google.

Then announce a competition. We'll showcase the best homepages that link to
our lyrics in the most creative way. Maybe give away some silly prizes.
Completely legal, nothing for Google to complain about, but gives you the same
effect very cleverly.

Instead they did this brazen crap... makes them look very amateurish.
Technically not very different, but the tone is completely different, and
Google had no choice but to penalize it.

~~~
jonahx
Where can I find the guidelines that specify what is legal under Google rules
and what is not? As someone who isn't familiar with rules, it's not obvious to
me what the technical difference is between what they did and what you're
suggesting. On a gut level your suggestion seems less spammy, but I'd like to
know what the actual rules are.

~~~
laugh7
Agreed. It is natural for a website to want to get traffic. How can Google
prove that RG's tactic was for SERPs and not just for the direct link traffic
from blogs?

------
lopatin
I can't imagine that this is permanent. Rap Genius is actually one of the most
high quality lyrics sites out there, not another spam farm. So removing them
for good actually reduces the quality of Google's search results.

I do suspect that because of the attention this once case received, and since
Matt Cutts was personally looking into the company's SEO tactics (talk about
bad luck), they issued a public, but temporary, slap. That would serve as an
eye opener to Rap Genius about how dangerously they're playing the SEO game
and a warning to everyone else tuning in.

~~~
georgemcbay
If the "slap" is too temporary then it backfires as a deterrent because such a
slap would teach future companies that you might as well game the system and
then accept your small, temporary punishment if you do happen to get caught,
which you might not in the first place if you are more clever about doing it
than the rapgenius guys were. There's really no point to Google making public
spectacle of a penalty that might end up so temporary as to be toothless.

In any case, I find it hard to shed a tear for these guys, they either knew
full well that they were flagrantly disobeying the Google rules or they are
incredibly stupid. And unlike some others I'm not so surprised that their
previously high ranking might have been gamed because they are one of a set of
companies I know of that has huge mindshare with the HN/startup crowd, but
virtually none with people I know who aren't part of that first group.

------
nswanberg
We are all much better off now that azlyrics.com is back to its rightful place
at the top of the lyric search results.

Rap Genius alleges that their competitors are using the same tactics. Will
those sites also get the same scrutiny? Perhaps now would be a good time for a
new lyric site run by some nice bland people to go on the offensive and rise
to the top.

~~~
selmnoo
So, the only reason RG in the first place _was_ able to provide lyrics with no
spam at no costs is because they were riding on VC money. Other lyrics sites
have to make money _somehow_. But then you might say -- well, what does that
matter to the audience? The answer is, usually the spam-free groovy train
usually _does_ eventually come to an end. Sites _can_ go on for long periods
of time serving straight up spam/ad-free content, but that always ends. Who
knew what RG was intending to do after this ended? Would they have gone the
Facebook route of datamining the hell out of Biebers fan to advertise them
shit they don't need?

One last thing to keep in mind: Rapgenius was an unlicensed lyric site. They
weren't playing ball on either side of the fence. Let's hope that a lyric site
emerges that provides lyrics with at least acceptable, non-distracting ads,
and serves licensed content. I really think merely going by this strategy will
get you ranked high on Google.

~~~
girvo
I hate that lyrics have to be licensed for informational purposes. I think
it's stupid.

~~~
frankdenbow
writers (a.k.a the anonymous person who wrote your favorite songs) make their
living writing those lyrics & deserve to be paid for their work

~~~
gnaritas
No one deserves to be paid simply for working. You might be the best X in the
world but if the world doesn't value X then you don't get paid. Pay is earned
by doing things people want to pay for, not simply by doing things. If people
don't want to pay for music/lyrics then music/lyrics has no market value. You
don't deserve anything.

~~~
sanswork
Clearly there is value since there is demand. What you're saying essentially
is that peoples right to pay what they want outweighs the creators right to
set their own price for their creations. That's not the way the world works.
Demand can dictate price to an extent in that the seller wants to maximize
earnings but it doesn't dictate it absolutely.

These companies(RG, azlyrics, etc) are making money where their main product
is the creative work of someone else. Damn straight that other person deserves
a cut of the profits because without them there is no site.

~~~
gnaritas
> What you're saying essentially is that peoples right to pay what they want
> outweighs the creators right to set their own price for their creations.
> That's not the way the world works.

No, that's exactly how the world works for luxury items like music; demand
drives, not supply. What the seller wants to charge means absolutely nothing
if demand is elastic and consumers can simply stop buying. Demand sets the
price, not the seller. Creators can set whatever price they like, and
consumers can and will ignore them; if you want to sell something you have to
set a price the market will actually bear.

> Damn straight that other person deserves a cut of the profits because
> without them there is no site.

No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion that
a person _deserves_ to be paid forever in secondary markets where people trade
their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in the messed
up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid. You as an artist do not deserve
to be paid every time someone makes a copy of your art; period. If I paint a
copy of a Picasso, I don't owe the Picasso family anything and the same should
apply to any other creation. Copies are not theft and the artist doesn't
_deserve_ anything.

~~~
shock-value
> No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion
> that a person deserves to be paid forever in secondary markets where people
> trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in
> the messed up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid.

Whether or not a person deserves to get paid forever for their work is
irrelevant to this discussion... The point is that _someone_ is getting paid
forever in this situation -- either the original songwriter or the owners of
the lyrics site. I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be
possible for a person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why
the hell should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?

~~~
gnaritas
> I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be possible for a
> person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why the hell
> should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?

Ok, fair question. I didn't claim a person, be it first or third party,
shouldn't be able to monetize anything; I said they don't _deserve_ it, not
that they can't do it. I'm disputing the sense of entitlement displayed by the
use of the word deserve. No one, whether the creator nor the third party, is
entitled to consumers money.

------
bluthru
I really hate how one search engine can make or break a site.

We live in the AOL dark ages and most don't even realize it.

~~~
adharmad
Care to elaborate? RG clearly broke the rules and forced google's hand here.
Google has to protect the integrity of their search results against such
gaming, else a day might come when all of Google's search results are due to
black-hat SEO and Google's brand itself would be worthless.

This would be the equivalent of Walmart/Safeway refusing to carry some
company's products because of {false/mis}-representation.

~~~
gress
The point is that Google sets the rules for the internet based on what makes
their algorithm work - I.e. What is good for Google. Instead of improving
their algorithm, they now manually punish sites for not obeying.

~~~
mscarborough
> The point is that Google sets the rules for the internet based on what makes
> their algorithm work...

Google sets their own rules for their own product. They don't run the
Internet.

These RapGenius guys consciously decided to try to game Google and lost. Boo
hoo. Can't win every game you play.

~~~
makomk
In effect they do set rules for the Internet as a whole, though. For instance,
if you're the owner of (say) a news website, Google don't want you to host
text ads that contain live links because their entire search engine is based
around the assumption that links are non-paid. So they penalized a number of
major news sites for doing this, effectively forcing them to stop by taking
away one of their main sources of traffic.

~~~
kelnos
Sure, but, arguably, those rules are "correct". The fact that they run the
leading search engine implies that they provide the best quality (or at least
best perceived quality) search results. Those rules presumably contribute to
that.

~~~
gress
That's a circular argument. Google has only been able to punish rule breakers
_since_ it became the leading search engine.

------
bushido
According to alexa their top 10 traffic sources are:

google.com - 35.7%; youtube.com - 4.4%; google.co.uk - 4.0%; facebook.com -
3.9%; google.de - 3.5%; google.ca - 3.1%; google.co.in - 2.6%; google.fr -
2.5%; google.com.tr - 1.5%; google.es - 1.1%;

Except for facebook all it top sources are Google owned(58.4%). This will
truly be disasterous for their revenues.

Considering they rank 59th for "rap genius" and 51st for "rapgenius" on
Google.

There are tons of lessons to be learned here. Don't depend on a single source
for traffic and most of all don't excessively try gaming the system, the
system usually catches up.

~~~
Goopplesoft
I think the true lesson is more a compound of those things: Don't depend on a
single source for traffic and if you do don't try gaming that source. Relying
on Google is likely a lyric industry standard.

~~~
pcooelt
the biggest lesson is don't brag about it in public!

------
dangrossman
This just makes Google less useful. RG had the best lyrics and annotations for
lots of songs. Now Google sends me to barely-readable sites that only exist to
show as many ads as possible per page, even if I include "rap genius" in the
search.

~~~
ryanhuff
You could always go direct to RG.

~~~
dangrossman
That's beside the point. Millions of people that search Google for lyrics
every month getting sent to worse sites is a problem for Google, not for me.

~~~
AznHisoka
The disappearance of 1 lyrics site(albeit a good one) from the face of Earth
doesn't even come closing to putting a deny into Google's search quality.
There are a million other sites out there. RapGenius is the one that has lost,
not Google

------
largehotcoffee
Honestly Rap Genius isn't that appealing of a site and the design is pretty
terrible. It's incredibly difficult to read anything on the page (azlyrics is
actually better at this).

I really hope someone new comes along and makes a better site with the same
premise (annotating lyrics).

------
itsprofitbaron
Whilst this may be surprising to some people on HN, this happens all of the
time to sites who build links in an unnatural way.

For instance, this has happened in the past to well known brands such as J.C
Penney through NYTimes expose[1], Interflora[2] more recently and a lots of
others.

An apology which RapGenius offered [3] doesn't fix this either.

Is it fair? Yes and No.

The only reason it isn't fair is that the site disappears from Google for the
BRAND term e.g. [rap genius]. My personal belief is that, devaluing the site
for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius] actually devalues Google's quality. On
the other side of the coin, if someone searches for [X rap genius] whilst they
are under penalty its fair that they do not rank for that either. However,
there are obvious reasons as to why the search quality team have decided to do
this.

 _How RapGenius can fix it / How you can too if your site gets a penalty:_

First of all, RapGenius if they are doing any link building now they should
pause it immediately until they’re out of penalty.

Secondly, in their apology [3] said:

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

They don't actually _need_ to use any other tool to get out of penalty beyond
Google Webmaster Tools although, ideally they should clean up all the links
beyond the ones Google has found (trust me, Google doesn’t find them all
within WMTs). Once you get out of a Google manual penalty and get hit by one
again the search quality team takes a much closer look – you don’t want that!

Anyway, they should download all the links in WMTs, OSE, Majestic etc
(although it looks like they only have OSE[3] so they should just download
them from WMTs and OSE) and then remove the duplicates.

Once they’ve done this, they should flag every single link which, they believe
is causing the penalty.

After identifying all the links which are causing the penalty, they should
create a Gmail to outreach to all of the sites to remove the links. They
should outreach to all these sites and documents all the sites they’ve
contacted, status – still live/nofollow/removed/requested payment/no response
etc.

Having got some links removed/nofollowed etc, they should then disavow all the
other sites that have requested payment or not given them response to the
removal. Personally, the disavow(s) that are done by myself are usually done
at the domain level although, there are reasons to do this at the URL level as
well (Rap Genius needs to make the decision which one to disavow).

After submitting the disavow they, should submit a reconsideration request
which outlines, the work they have done – from the spreadsheet – and also
offer Google’s Search Quality Team the login to the Gmail to show they’ve
tried to get the links removed and that some people have asked for payment
etc.

The Google Search Quality team will review the site then, they’ll either flag
more links to be removed or they’ll get out of penalty – after which Rap
Genius will start appearing for the BRAND term again and other results once
the Google Algorithms trust the site again.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&)

[2] [http://searchengineland.com/google-says-no-comment-on-why-
in...](http://searchengineland.com/google-says-no-comment-on-why-interflora-
was-penalized-149308)

[3] [http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter-
to...](http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter-to-google-
about-rap-genius-seo-lyrics)

~~~
mahranch
" _The only reason it isn 't fair is that the site disappears from Google for
the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius]._"

How is that not fair? They were caught attempting to cheat google. Not only
that, but cheat their competitors and us (the users). In most scenarios
(criminal, sports, academic), being caught means it's game over. And that's
exactly what happened here.

When you get caught stealing from a cash register or breaking into a house,
they don't just make you put the stuff back and send you on your way. When you
caught cheating in professional sports, you forfeit the entire game; in higher
academia, kicked out of school.

If anything, I think google is too soft on people attempting to cheat them.
When it's obvious and blatant, they need to lay down the law so hard that
people won't even consider it next time. This will make the user experience
better for everyone. A slap on the wrist tells people the risk is worth it and
that means we will be served up potentially worse (less organic) search
results.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Criminal, sports, and academic concerns are all governed by bodies that impose
those sanctions. When Google imposes a sanction they are the judge, jury, and
executioner.

Since Google offers a public service and is owned by public shareholders, this
poses somewhat of a problem....especially when you consider their marketshare
and whether or not such sanctions offers them a competitive advantage.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Criminal, sports, and academic concerns are all governed by bodies that
> impose those sanctions. When Google imposes a sanction they are the judge,
> jury, and executioner.

Actually, in all of those cases, the judge and executioner (and, usually, the
legislature making the rules) are all employees of the same organization. In
some cases there is a separate jury as a finder of fact (e.g., in criminal
cases in the US and countries similar legal systems), though in sports and
academic cases there may well not be, depending on the particular rules of the
particular organization.

------
citizens
Current rankings:

#42 (was #1) - justin bieber memphis lyrics

#43 (was #1) - justin bieber all bad lyrics

#44 (was #2) - justin bieber hold tight lyrics

#45 (was #1) - justin bieber one life lyrics

#46 (was #4) - justin bieber bad day lyrics

#48 (was #7) - justin bieber lyrics

#54 (was #3) - justin bieber change me lyrics

#59 (was #2) - justin bieber pyd lyrics

#60 (was #1) - justin bieber confident lyrics

#63 (was #1) - justin bieber heartbreaker lyrics

#64 (was #5) - justin bieber roller coaster lyrics

#68 (was #2) - justin bieber all that matters lyrics

#68 (was #3) - justin bieber recovery lyrics

#50 - rap genius

source: serpscan.com

~~~
rplnt
Can I ask why Justin Bieber in all the examples? Was this site somehow bieber-
focused or bieber-promoted? I've never heard of it before this actually.

edit: Followed links to past stories and got my answer here
[http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-
exposed](http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed)

------
akshat
I don't understand how Rap Genius' hack was any worse than what Mixpanel does
with its free plan.

[https://mixpanel.com/free/](https://mixpanel.com/free/)

Here, they are bribing customers to link to their site? Would this not be
illegal too?

~~~
suhail
It's different: it's a recommendation of our product and it drives real clicks
back to Mixpanel (excluding google). Powered by badges are extremely common
and are more akin to an ad. The main difference is that Rapgenius' sole goal
is to game Google, ours is not.

~~~
pcooelt
it's actually not - Matt Cutts specifically made a video about these exact
type of "widget" links a few months ago. He recommended that they be no-
followed.

------
Nursie
Google's revenue depends on providing the best results it can to searchers,
within limits of result pollution they do themselves (clearly demarked
advertising at present). If they allow cynical SEO then the results get worse
for everyone and people will look for alternatives.

I'm glad they have a proactive slap-down policy. Let's not go back to the late
90s and the likes of altavista, when you might have got one hit in ten pages
of spam, SEO link farms.

------
zoltar92
This is absolutely rediculous, google is upholding it's rules but forgetting
the POINT of the rules. The whole point is to make the most relevant results
come up on google searches. The fact that rapgenius needs to "hack their way"
to higher link relevancy seems like a internal google problem and penalizing
them makes googles results LESS relevant. Tl;dr google's cutting off their
nose in spite of their face.

------
skndr
It's a pyrrhic victory. Now, the best lyrics site can't be found and Google
itself is less useful for it.

At least
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=it+was+a+good+day+rapgenius](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=it+was+a+good+day+rapgenius)
seems to work fine.

~~~
siliconviking
For what it's worth, they use Yahoo's search API.

------
seoguy
Certainly a harsh blow and a lesson learned, but not the lesson you think. The
lesson is to not allow a third party "black box" to be the central traffic
source for the monetization model of your business. Rapgenius understood this
well and does have an excellent community on boarding strategy, but was still
heavily reliant on google as a main pillar of its customer acquisition model.

I've lost one Alexa top 2000 site to a google penalty, and several smaller
sites, saw this coming miles away.

I know exactly what they are going through, never forget the day when my JV
partner called me at 4AM and told me the apocalypse scenario has happened.
Even worst than the financial blow of losing a $30k a day advertising
property, was the brutal realization of googling your brands name and seeing
it not show up. Going in to analytics real time and seeing a sub 100 number
for the first time in 6 months was quite an eery feeling as well.

Google did this to set an example, and they will be reinstated worst case in 6
months.

------
rubiquity
I think this is a great lesson in the disparity between two things:

1\. Breaking rules

2\. Not being liked and breaking rules

~~~
walshemj
3 Not getting Caught

------
glass_of_water
I think this could be a deathblow to Rap Genius.

I performed the following searches in an incognito tab and could not find
rapgenius in the first two pages of results (I did not look beyond the first
two pages):

"rap god eminem lyrics"

"machine gun funk rap lyrics"

"lose yourself eminem lyrics"

~~~
couradical
it looks like they might have stopped showing "rapgenius.com" in non site-
specific results. Searching for "rap genius eminem lose yourself" doesn't give
any results in the top 5 pages. The only time I can see results from them is
by adding a "site:" modifier to the search.

I think you're right, that depending on how long this lasts, they could be in
a world of hurt.

------
arrrg
Right in the middle of my yearly Christmas music shopping spree! I’m already
not finding the lyrics I want to find.

Since what they do have to offer is about a million times better than any
other lyrics site I’m pretty sure they will weather this. I mean, they have
to. Their service is pretty excellent, I’m not even sure why there way any
need to fuck around with Google.

------
Xorlev
Just goes to show, invest in some real marketing, make something really
valuable to someone rather than relying on 'growth hacks' that tend to explode
in your face.

~~~
gfodor
How does this show that? All this shows is that there is risk do doing growth
hacks. It does nothing to show if these hacks are worth the risk. Rap Genius,
is, after all, the most well known and successful site for rap lyrics as far
as I know, so (ethics notwithstanding) unless this kills their business, it
was a smart move.

------
girvo
We always talk about not building a business on someone else's API... Funnily
enough, you could almost say that applies here. Gone from any SERPS, entirely.
Crazy. I dislike that Google has this much power sometimes :(

------
chaz
Wow, that's a very stiff penalty if they're not even turning up for their own
brand name. It will likely cost them millions. It's a clear warning to all
sites out there to avoid similar tactics.

~~~
yogo
I feel for them. At the end of the day business is suffering. However, a high
profile example of the consequences of using these myopic tactics is also
good.

------
techaddict009
Well Google does takes manual actions against link schemes. Google had taken
action against its on Chrome browser in 2012.
[http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-
pag...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-
reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551) check out for more info.

------
brentm
There is something very important going on here. The reality is most search
results are gamed & Google knows it. Everyone should be afraid of this
happening to them.

Clearly what RapGenius did was wrong, very stupid and extremely short sighted.
However, you're still going to find a good percentage of your search results
today from rankings achieved with equally as shady strategies.

Google is too big & too powerful to play these kind of games and arbitrarily
decide who gets penalized and who doesn't. Dare I say it but part of me feels
like there is not enough bureaucracy in large penalty decisions considering
their impact. There are literally millions of other sites doing the same thing
and happily continuing their day.

------
johnpowell
They seem to be using Quantcast and are directly measured. This should be
interesting over the next week.

[https://www.quantcast.com/rapgenius.com](https://www.quantcast.com/rapgenius.com)

------
jsumrall
Its very scary to build your business on being ranked high on Google. When you
build your house on sand...

------
usaphp
Why did not they penalize their competitor websites which are using the same
(even worse) tactics?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Why did not they penalize their competitor websites which are using the
same (even worse) tactics?"

Source? Proof? RG was penalised because their method were made public and
Google was made aware of it. If there is proof other sites are doing the same
(I don't doubt they are but proof is needed) I'm sure Google will penalise
them too.

~~~
usaphp
As I remember, In the "apology" letter RG provided a list of resources that
prove that other websites are doing the same thing.

~~~
chinmoy
What they provided wasn't exactly 'proof'. Without any conclusive ground they
accused other lyrics sites. Linking to Open Site Explorer and saying they they
think some links might be suspicious hardly counts as proof, IMO. Besides, now
that the matter has been brought under Google's attention, they'll of course
penalize the other lyric sites too, if any violation is found. But in case of
RG, it was all out in the open and I think that's why action was quick.

------
lando2319
Question: From Google's perspective how exactly does Google lower the ranking
for Rap Genius? I imagine they have some sort of 'naughty' list. Does Google
just discount the rankings by some number they determine is fair? And is this
effect permanent? If Rap Genius plays by the rules and still manages to have
good SEO, will they eventually bubble back up to the top or are they
officially doomed to lower rankings?

------
knes
Just did a quick "bieber heartbreaker lyrics" query and couldn't find them in
the first 10 pages of results...

Outch, this is going to hurt them.

------
jowiar
As much as Rap Genius probably deserves it, this seems like it is treading
dangerously close to Antitrust territory. Any lawyers on here?

------
arikrak
Offering money or return-links for links is shady, but it's not inherently
illegal or anything.[1] Google doesn't own the internet.

I wonder if it's a worthwhile risk. While there are some high-profile busts,
in general most sites probably don't get caught. Though it's probably harder
to do effectively since Google improved their algorithms.

In the flower case [2], Google claimed the links hadn't helped the sites.
Though Google couldn't have penalized all the Flower companies, since that
would have made their results much worse.

[1] If you're paying someone to link to you, that needs to be disclosed, but
that doesn't mean the link needs to be nofollow. Though I guess following that
rule would make it very easy to be caught.

[2] [http://searchengineland.com/ny-times-covers-paid-link-
scheme...](http://searchengineland.com/ny-times-covers-paid-link-schemes-
first-j-c-penney-now-flowers-industry-76340)

------
pcooelt
Rap Genius was given a "manual action" aka a penalty applied by an actual
human because of the public outing that happened over the past few days, and
the attention gained specifically by Matt Cutts.

Their overall link portfolio is not half as bad as their competition, however
all this attention forced Google to take action being that they need to live
up to their reputation as hard asses.

Let's face it, the algorithm might not pick up on these bartered links because
they are a drop in the bucket of their overall link portfolio.

Really more than anything this is another PR stunt by Google's search quality
team. They have been outing people on Twitter for the past month
(backlinks.com I believe and another blackhat service) and want the general
public to know that they mean business.

------
mspeuleski
Google practices the exact same dirty tactics it punishes smaller websites
for. Note how they have a lot of ads all over their pages? If small websites
do that, they get punished. Also, note how Google steals content from
wikipedia and posts it next to search results? If small sites do that they get
punished. Lastly, google is the world's largest reseller of links, except
their links are "ok", for some obscure reason....you can pay google a large
sum of money and see your link on billions of pages worldwide via link ads.

If you're not scared of google's double talk, blatant spying, abuse of
monopolistic powers, then you either work for them or you are completely
alienated.

------
snogglethorpe
Man, that's a crazily passive-aggressive article... the author dances around
it, couching his dislike (and fear) in slippery and vague language, but the
clear impression one is left with is that he feels Google is "the enemy"... ><

------
ryeon
Google is seriously doing a disservice to its lyrics searching users by
penalizing RG. RG offers (in my opinion) the best quality and the most
information rich lyrics pages on the web, it doesn't compare to anything out
there.

------
xkarga00
These guys will never grow up

------
badman_ting
End result: now we have to use those regular, shitty lyrics sites again, or
dig through the results. Mmmmm, so much better. You can't even get there by
specifying rap genius in your query! This blows.

------
timtamboy63
Might be fair, but their argument about all their competitors doing this is
completely valid. If Google's going to penalize RapGenius, they should
penalize the other lyrics websites as well.

------
mrcactu5
Can someone explain to me why Google is formalizing this against Rap Genius?

I really like their n-gram viewer of the New York Times wedding announcements.
[http://blog.visual.ly/rap-genius-new-project-
visualizes-30-y...](http://blog.visual.ly/rap-genius-new-project-
visualizes-30-years-of-new-york-times-wedding-data/)

I would be interested in learning what they have to say about NLP (Natural
Language Processing) since they deal with language which is quite vernacular.

------
joelrunyon
> Finally, it’s probably an incredibly dumb business model to be doing a
> lyrics site that hopes for Google traffic in a time when Google, like Bing,
> is moving toward providing direct answers. Lyrics, to my understanding,
> often have to be licensed. That makes them a candidate for Google to license
> directly and provide as direct answers.

Controversy aside - This seemed like the most interesting part of the write-up
to me.

------
EGreg
Opportunity to make the next big song annotation site before New Year's?

Seriously how hard could it be ... write a Node.js app that can handle 10k
clients on one machine, and partition the data by the song being annotated.
Don't even need $1 million dollars. YouTube hosts the videos, anyway.

Ah, but there is just one problem... song lyrics are copyrighted and a license
to some database is like $20,000

Wish I knew a way around that.

~~~
quahada
The challenge is not technical. The challenge is community. RapGenius is a
network effects driven site, so it's utility is driven by how many people use
the site. Technology is table-stakes, but branding and marketing matter much
more at this point.

RapGenius grew because their user experience was much better than their
competition. This was the foundation for their branding & marketing. Their
growth will be sustained by their content and (once these penalties are phased
out) by users' ability to discover their unique content. The technology is
merely an enabler for the community-generated content. New competitors must
find ways around the community's cold-start problem.

Edit: typos

------
smackfu
What's _really_ amusing is that after the penalty, most searches that include
"rap genius" now have this result on the first page: How Rap Genius Won the
SEO Game

[http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5812335/how-rap-
geniu...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5812335/how-rap-genius-won-
the-seo-game)

------
cromwellian
I never heard of rapgenius before this, or never noticed what lyric site I was
on since I treat lyric lookups almost like dictionary lookups.

As a result of this story, I now have heard of RG. So ironically, any press is
good press, and despite the banning, and the public shaming in the media, it
may very well be the equivalent of millions of dollars in free brand
awareness.

------
aspensmonster
People are always gaming the search engines. Lyric websites are some of the
absolute worst perpetrators of this. They care for absolutely nothing but ad
impressions and their sites are a tortuous experience to behold. That being
said, I'd still say it's a shame since for once, someone gaming the system
actually had decent content to offer.

------
ateevchopra
Interestingly now on searching Rap Genius on google, articles about them
getting penalised are coming on the first 3 pages.

------
pcooelt
fyi I grapped a rank report from a few days ago from some of their popular
kwds. Looks like they are down 4-6 pages on average:

[http://cdn.elite-strategies.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/12/r...](http://cdn.elite-strategies.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/12/rap-genius-penalty.png)

------
pbreit
I'm confused and concerned by Google's policy. I make a product. If I send out
product to blogger with a review request (which would, of course, include a
link to my site), am I running afoul of the guidelines? I don't even care that
much about the Google juice as I do the coverage.

~~~
jhonovich
Simply asking someone to review your product is not an issue. Offering money
to do so or offering to do things in exchange for the review (like promoting
their site on social media or your site) is.

------
sneak
It's super lame that Google penalizes individual cases versus just fixing
their algorithms across the board, because it means that other sites that
employ similar techniques and aren't high-profile/useful enough to get posted
about to HN are able to continue unimpeded.

~~~
chaz
No need to pick between the two. Google does both.

------
ben0x539
I'm shocked to see that their previous fairly good ranking has been fraudulent
all along.

~~~
girvo
I don't think it was. I think this is a huge penalty, not a correction.

------
AznHisoka
Looks like ordinary visitors can't even find their site now:
[https://twitter.com/fuckshivan/status/415879789522587648](https://twitter.com/fuckshivan/status/415879789522587648)

The power of Google.

------
kyle128
Let's not forget anyone that pays google in some way (adwords) bounces back
from this almost immediately. Aka 6 months or less. Have known people only
spending 10k per month that bounced back from penalization in 2-3 months.

------
usaphp
That just proves how google search algorithms become inaccurate. I agree,
RapGenius did some shady things, BUT it still has a better content then other
websites which are now ranked much higher.

------
ilaksh
I'm not an expert in SEO but I bet 1/3 to 1/2 of the serious SEO
organizations/individuals do the same thing or something very similar.

"Its not cheating unless you get caught"

------
johnward
The funny thing about this is that rap genius is the most user friendly site
and it should be out ranking all of the other spam lyric sites.

------
badapple
what about others that are doing the same thing.

for example TINT

tintup.com

once you create a free account they have the following:

Dear valued Tint customer, Would you like to write a review about Tint? In
exchange for your opinions/blog post, we are giving away 50% off FOREVER promo
code for our Plus Plan. To learn more, click the button below:

screen shot: [http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c](http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c)

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that Rap Genius was not penalized on Bing. (and Yahoo which
uses Bing).

RG may want to consider a hedge bet on search engines.

------
poopicus
Damn, I tried searching up some rap lyrics that I knew worked a couple of days
ago, no dice. How long does this penalisation last?

------
DannoHung
If RapGenius is smart, they'll turn this into beef and get front page coverage
on a bunch of newspapers and websites.

------
chmartin
You would think Google would be able to tell that a Justin Bieber link does
not belong on an arbitrary twitter post

------
tomasien
How long will this last? Rap Genius is a fantastic asset to the world, I hope
this isn't permanent.

------
ljlolel
Try this:

[bieber heartbreaker lyrics rap genius] or even [bieber heartbreaker lyrics
rapgenius.com]

------
malkia
This is one of the things where there is no clear right or wrong.

------
qq66
When you don't get Rapgenius when you search "Bieber Rapgenius," you know that
Google is forgoing its mission of serving users and instead just flexing its
big muscles for everyone to see.

------
easy_rider
Couldn't resist
[http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/44344545.jpg](http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/44344545.jpg)

------
notastartup
searching 2pac lyrics rap genius yields no rapgenius.com either. it shows all
the competitor lyric sites but not rapgenius.

I have mixed feelings about this. How long until we see a game of he-said-she-
said? Of course, socially engineered link building aimed at gaming the SERP is
against the interest of consumers and google. However, now that we can see a
competitor get taken out from google SERP by pointing their attention to a
malicious technique, we should see more stories like this.

The problem I have with SERP is that while it's good at finding the most
relevant site (still returns spammy sites so not perfect) most of the time,
it's built around the advertisement model. It doesn't give you a snapshot of
the cross section of the data you are looking at across all the domains out
there so that you can't choose on your own which lyric is the most to your
liking (it really doesn't matter because lyrics are same across different
websites). So the question of who ranks first even though they have identical
content shows some underlying inefficiencies caused by the Advertisement
revenue model. The more there is, the more advertisement gets seen and
clicked.

I feel that the search engine space with selling our attention to
advertisements only creates more waste by others trying to get a share of the
revenue by jumping into a profitable niche by creating an identical or similar
content (article spinning etc). In turn, more competition would create people
to use more Adwords or other advertising platforms. The end result is that
consumer ends up with untrustworthy websites with content in the back of their
priorities. Content should be judged by comparing it with other websites that
offer the same content with an overview listing all the different domains
showing that content. While displaying such cross domain contents, it should
not bring advertisement as an incentive model.

------
greatsuccess
How is what Rap Genius any different than selling ad space, Googles core
business? It seems to be that this was just an interpersonal request for an AD
to link back to Rap Genius.

What is wrong with that anyway? Adwords and Adsense are just an affiliate
program anyway.

I dont see much of a problem with it.

