
Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO - iball
http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter-to-google-about-rap-genius-seo-lyrics
======
davemel37
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?

~~~
ripberge
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.

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

~~~
davemel37
Sure, here is the link.
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1)

------
gmisra
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.

~~~
newnewnew
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_lookatme
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...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/rap-genius-incites-unsolicited-
startup-beef-over-sexies-1463237777)

~~~
newnewnew
Valleywag is east coast hater bullshit. It's a badge of honor to get attacked
by Valleywag[1]

[1] [http://valleywag.gawker.com/anti-foreigner-vc-also-
supports-...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/anti-foreigner-vc-also-supports-
hiring-discrimination-1215372055)

~~~
look_lookatme
What does that have to do with the way these guys act?

~~~
nswanberg
What does an article entitled "Anti-Foreigner VC Also Supports Hiring
Discrimination" have to do with a story about a company where one of the
founders is named "Mahbod Moghadam" and appears to be a first-generation
Iranian-American? If your instinct is to cite that website, probably it is
better to question whether the point you are trying to make is thoughtful or
reflexive.

------
ripberge
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
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.

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

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

[2]-
[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon)

------
AndrewKemendo
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.

~~~
joelrunyon
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.

------
antr

        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
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
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.

------
joelrunyon
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.

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

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

~~~
lfender6445
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.

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

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

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

------
keltex
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](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks)

------
jrochkind1
> 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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658)]
makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber
songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber
relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were
hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will
enjoy'.

So they're just plain lying, right?

[I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their
statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might
find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]

------
onedev
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.

~~~
seiji
_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.)

------
ErikAugust
"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
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.

~~~
mikeg8
Well said

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

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

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

------
shawnz
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.

------
mbesto
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.

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

~~~
radicalbyte
Ahhh, a Bieber fansite. That explains it :)

------
thefallsman
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
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.

------
Throwadev
#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.

------
andrewhillman
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.

------
justinbeaver
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.

~~~
seiji
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.

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

~~~
jlebron2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658)

~~~
julespitt
Jinx!

------
undoware
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.

------
yeukhon
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.

~~~
revelation
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?

~~~
yeukhon
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?

~~~
toddmatthews
You seem to keep using examples with friends or buddies, and no one is gonna
fault you for sharing a link to your buddies site from your site, especially
if you say "Here's my buddies/friends site...you should check them out"..thats
genuine

the problem here is they are/were promoting a campaign in which they were
asking you to specifically place "beiber" links on your blog, so that they get
better page ranks in google.

you and you're buddy (or even a celebrity helping out their friend for free)
are trying to share a particular link with your blogs viewers, and that single
instance will probably not have a crazy effect on google page rank

RG is trying to game the system by getting bieber backlinks on a bunch of
blogs in trade for a tweet...thats against googles rules

------
ErikAugust
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.

~~~
mikeg8
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.

------
gscott
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.

------
rch
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.

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

~~~
mikeg8
completely agreed.

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

e.g.
[http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marria...](http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-
specialist-bengali-baba-ji/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-
bengali-baba-ji)

------
systematical
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.

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

------
octatone2
The chart at the end needs a key, I have no idea what I am looking at. Should
be on [http://wtfviz.net/](http://wtfviz.net/)

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

------
duked
". 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.

------
jrochkind1
man, these guys really like their open letters, their sense of entitlement,
and their not knowing what they're doing.

------
jrockway
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.

------
mcgwiz
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.

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

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

------
eric970
I love how at the end, they're all like "hey, our competitors do it too!"

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

------
chasing
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.

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

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

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

------
jaredmck
Outing all your competition is extremely lame, stop snitching.

------
Axsuul
Heh, the links to their competitor sites are dofollow.

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

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

