
RapGenius Growth Hack Exposed - jmarbach
http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed
======
Matt_Cutts
We're investigating this now.

~~~
8ig8
Got their attention. Looks like they are changing their tune.

@jasonjm75 @randfish feel stupid in retrospect - gonna stop - but I hope
google revisits how ALL lyrics sites do SEO! our competition is... doing some
ULTRA shady stuff! I have no doubt in my mind that they pay for links

[https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/415297097072537601](https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/415297097072537601)
[https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/415297158896553985](https://twitter.com/RapGenius/status/415297158896553985)

~~~
drawkbox
In all fairness, rapgenius does have some of the best content and it really is
the best information for lyrics. It sucks they have to resort to this to get
good information above spammy lyrics sites.

I actually thought rapgenius was a good idea solely because the alternative
was spammy almost like before stackoverflow. So yes it is wrong in every way
to manipulate the system but how can you get noticed if others are doing it.
If anything they shined a light on the problem and the better information
should win in google which is fair.

~~~
md224
> So yes it is wrong in every way to manipulate the system but how can you get
> noticed if others are doing it. If anything they shined a light on the
> problem and the better information should win in google which is fair.

I really don't buy this post hoc justification of RapGenius's actions. I
understand the world is a complex place where we often have to make
compromises, but saying "Poor RapGenius, forced into using black hat SEO" is
kind of ridiculous. These guys (or at least the guy in charge of "growth
hacking") enthusiastically made quid pro quo deals for backlinks.

I try to be polite on the Internet, but all I can say is _fuck that_.

> In all fairness, rapgenius does have some of the best content and it really
> is the best information for lyrics.

I agree... which is why it's a shame that I'm going to look elsewhere from now
on.

~~~
drawkbox
Stackoverflow had the same problem with expertsexchange early on, they didn't
resort to it which rapgenius shouldn't have. I am just saying that really the
best content should win, here it isn't due to manipulation by other entities
not just rapgenius. It might be more of a google problem.

rapgenius might say here, 'don't hate the playa hate teh game son!'

~~~
md224
Of course, in an ideal world we wouldn't have a black hat SEO arms race. But
as you mentioned, Stack Overflow managed to flourish without resorting to
those tactics. The context is important, but it doesn't forgive their actions.

> rapgenius might say here, 'don't hate the playa hate teh game son!'

That's a nice phrase, but I think I'm going to go ahead and hate both.

~~~
twic
> Stack Overflow managed to flourish without resorting to those tactics

Well, or Stack Overflow managed to flourish without resorting to those tactics
_and getting found out_.

[subs - please insert dramatic chipmunk here]

------
sunspeck
Far cleverer RapGenius growth hack exposed:

RG has seemingly generated a unique URL w/<title> for each _line_ of each of
each song listing. Google slurps these up and gives them prominent SERP
rankings, though the links are all just doorways redirecting to the main song
page. (Albeit, redirecting to an anchor at the lyric queried, with
highlighting effect and annotation popup to boot. Pretty friendly UX.)

Eg. [http://rapgenius.com/9208/Ice-cube-it-was-a-good-
day/Today-i...](http://rapgenius.com/9208/Ice-cube-it-was-a-good-day/Today-i-
didnt-even-have-to-use-my-ak)

Thus one song with a remix or two might become 469 search results:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=And+if+I+hit+the+switch%2C+I...](https://www.google.com/search?q=And+if+I+hit+the+switch%2C+I+can+make+the+ass+drop&oq=And+if+I+hit+the+switch%2C+I+can+make+the+ass+drop&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l3.1250j0j7&bmbp=0&sourceid=chrome&espvd=215&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=91&q=%22And+momma+cooked+a+breakfast+with+no+hog%22+site%3Arapgenius.com&safe=off)

~~~
lauradhamilton
I don't think that will help them. I actually think that's a bug.

Having multiple urls that go to the same place will get you penalized for
duplicate content in a heartbeat.

They should actually specific a canonical url for each specific line-number
url.

So, I don't think it's a "growth hack"\--I think it's an oversight that may
cost them.

~~~
jaredmck
They don't go to the same place - they go to different annotations within the
same song which then link back into the full song page.

------
yelnatz
Wow, they write emails the same way they dress up.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo)

~~~
maxcan
Its like someone wrote Entertainment 720 a check for $15mil

~~~
retr0h
Jean-Ralphio deserves much respect :P

------
zevyoura
Check out this comment[0] on this post:

>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!

Named as the same guy as the email exchange, Mahbod.

[0] [http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-
exposed#comment-11...](http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-
exposed#comment-1175111364)

~~~
berberous
FYI, that's one of the 3 co-founders.

~~~
nullymcnull
Wow. Can he really be completely oblivious to the fact that this approach is
going to bring the hammer of doom down upon them?

------
ChuckMcM
So presumably they are going to keep a list of all those pages they tweeted
out so that when their organic rank falls into the depths they can then email
back all those people and say "please take down that page you put up with
those links on it."

That will be particularly true when someone's random blog has a bunch of links
to Bieber lyrics on it.

~~~
Scriptor
There was a post a bit back (which you might be referencing) about almost this
exact situation, except it was about black hat SEO dramatically backfiring.
Specifically, businesses were asking bloggers and news sites to delete spam
comments that linked back to the sites.

The HTML that Mahbod wants you to paste looks pretty similar to what those
spam comments were like...

~~~
mdpane
> There was a post a bit back (which you might be referencing) about almost
> this exact situation, except it was about black hat SEO dramatically
> backfiring. Specifically, businesses were asking bloggers and news sites to
> delete spam comments that linked back to the sites.

I believe that would be this great write up on the current situation:
[http://www.theawl.com/2013/12/the-new-spammer-
panic](http://www.theawl.com/2013/12/the-new-spammer-panic)

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is an excellent summary, thanks for the link.

------
obstacle1
How in the hell is this a 'growth hack'? This is _old-school_ black hat SEO.

~~~
meritt
white hat.

~~~
baby
it's neither of those, but if you had to say on which side it is tilting, then
I would say black hat. It's obvious that he's using Google tricks (get good
backlinks to get a higher pagerank). That's not white hat SEO at all.

------
jgalt212
Yooo waddup!

That will be my preferred business salutation going forward.

~~~
onedev
Add an extra 'o' to spice things up a bit.

~~~
goldenkey
Add an extra 'ho' for some real kick.

------
jlgaddis
Violating Google's ToS doesn't sound like a good way of getting to and/or
staying at the top of the SERPs over the long-term.

~~~
slig
A certain Q/A site has been breaking lots of Google's guidelines for years and
they are up and running.

Google doesn't seem to care if you're big enough.

~~~
codinghorror
I assume you mean Quora, because I know at Stack Exchange we were religious
about doing everything the right way.

I think Google cares more about the user experience (how bad is it if a user
ends up on this page after searching) than the exact letter of the law. The
truly sleazy sites usually do badly on both metrics though.

~~~
interstitial
He most certainly means Quora, which because of it's dark patterns I refuse to
visit even when it ranks. Stack Exchange on the other hand, has another google
problem. Many of the top results are "closed as blah blah blah" \-- so you
arrive from google to a Stack Exchange page which has your exact question,
excitedly you click, only to find it closed and unanswered.

~~~
codinghorror
Yeah closed and unanswered should definitely be delisted. These kinds of
questions usually have negative votes so they do have a lower score in the
sitemap weight but I am not sure how much emphasis G gives that.

I will forward this on for SE to think about improving.

~~~
zaroth
I think it's a more basic problem. You find exactly the question you have, but
SO decided the question was 'wrong' somehow.

The question may not be answerable, but it doesn't make the question wrong.
The question is nothing more than an expression of the users query or intent.

For example, unanswerable questions could give a stack listing if relevant
_answerable_ questions.

But it just seems wrong to take highly targeted inbound traffic and send them
to a page which basically says 'nothing to see here'.

------
mulligan
I can only assume this would hurt them since the Panda update by Google a
while back.

But more importantly:

Every instance of one-on-one communication I've seen by Rap Genius (this and
the aphyr emails) include over-the-top frat boy style phrases. Are they being
sarcastic, is it an affectation, or do they really speak like a parody of
every "bro" ever?

~~~
Tossrock
I met them at YC's Work For A Startup day and they do in fact talk like that.

Fun quote from one of the cofounders:

>Mr. Ohanian asked the panel, “One of the things I see time and time again is
that we have companies who went to the West Coast and then come screaming back
to New York. What was the driving force to come back to New York?”

Rap Genius’ Ilan Zechory took the question first. “It’s where we lived,” he
said. “It’s where our friends were. There are no women in the Bay Area,
genuinely. We never considered moving out there. We always felt like our West
Coast trips were, like, all of us in a Nissan Xterra, in like a Weston, with
some weed, trying to steal bags of money to bring back to the East Coast.”

------
Ryanmf
"TONE-DEAF DOUCHE EXPOSES ONE WEIRD TRICK TO GET YOU MASSIVE TRAFFIC AND HELLA
BACKLINKS!"

"MATT CUTTS HATES HIM"

------
halcyondaze
This strategy is total fail, Google specifically targeted this stuff with
Penguin, which is a relatively old update by now. Combine the scaled approach
with posts like this and the fact that Matt Cutts hangs around HN = likely
won't end well for them.

~~~
planetx403
[http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-implies-google-is-
awa...](http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-implies-google-is-aware-of-
seos-bribing-bloggers-180528)

------
citizens
Here's where they rank:

#1 - Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics

#1 - Justin Bieber Confident Lyric

#1 - Justin Bieber Heartbreaker Lyrics

#1 - Justin Bieber Memphis Lyrics

#1 - Justin Bieber One Life Lyrics

#2 - Justin Bieber All That Matters Lyrics

#2 - Justin Bieber Hold Tight Lyrics

#2 - Justin Bieber Pyd Lyrics

#3 - Justin Bieber Change Me Lyrics

#3 - Justin Bieber Recovery Lyrics

#4 - Justin Bieber Bad Day Lyrics

#5 - Justin Bieber Roller Coaster Lyrics

#7 - Justin Bieber Lyrics

Source: serpscan.com

~~~
antr
I'd love to hear from Matt Cutts on this

~~~
mikeg8
He just responded, "We're investing this now."

~~~
ra3
>"We're investing this now."

wow, google must have been super impressed ;)

------
PavlovsCat
Eww. A quote by a rap singer comes to mind:

    
    
      Cuz if you go platinum, it's got nothing to do with luck
      It just means that a million people are stupid as fuck

\-- Immortal Technique

~~~
krapp
word.

------
jeffehobbs
Does the word "hack" mean anything at all anymore? For that matter, is this
really any sort of "Genius"? grumble grumble

~~~
revelation
Well it is a hack, in the sense that it is the 1990 idea of hacking your
Google rank. Nowadays, all this hack will accomplish is getting them
downranked or banned altogether.

~~~
code_duck
One would have been a true prophetic genius to be trying this in 1990.

------
grimtrigger
Something tells me the RapGenius guys truly believe "any publicity is good
publicity". Might be something they learned from the hip-hop industry.

~~~
Sambdala
Well, they are 'balla-sourcing' now...

------
tomrod
How can people conduct business like a bad impression of Tom Haverford from
Parks and Rec? I think I have too much Ron Swanson in me to take anyone that
pushes me like that seriously.

~~~
romanovcode
More like John Ralphio.

------
loumf
This is pretty dangerous. If you do it at scale, you get noticed by google and
getting noticed isn't a good thing.

~~~
Killah911
I'd say being on the top you HN will get you in Matt Cutts' radar real quick.
Really hoping he chimes in on this thread

~~~
djm_
..and 13 minutes later. [1]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957463)

------
antr
I don't know if this form of dubious back-linking is considered as "growth
hacking".

~~~
bigiain
Well, not until we find out that Mahbod has defected to a competing lyric
site, and this is his final "destroy the incumbent competition" action…

------
cphoover
Doesn't google penalize what they view as attempts to manipulate their
algorithm through spamming and link trading. Couldn't this potentially
backfire?

~~~
andreasklinger
Yes of course.

It is basically a variation of:

"Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages
exclusively for the sake of cross-linking"

plus

"Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich
anchor text links"

Source:
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en)

~~~
malloreon
in this case, however, RG is "linking to you" from twitter's domain, while
receiving links from the blogger's domain.

To google, this is a one way (non-reciprocal; read: "more valuable") link in
RG's favor.

~~~
RBerenguel
It's a set of many links in the bottom of a page, mostly unrelated to the main
content of the post. This lights many red flags in the Google webspam metrics,
I'm pretty sure.

------
avalaunch
Suggested "rapgenius growth hack" hack:

Become affiliate blogger.

Add links as requested.

Get "MASSiVE traffic" from rapgenius tweets.

Remove links.

------
lnanek2
Shouldn't they have the bloggers include a little JavaScript plugin or
something that writes whatever links they need boosted at the moment? Just
doing a set of current links seems limiting. I know it has been confirmed the
Google bot runs JavaScript and even finds URLs generated by JavaScript.

E.g. so they should say: "Just include the RapGenius trending songs widget at
the bottom of your site! It lists the latest hot songs on our site: <script
...> "

~~~
sylvinus
If it was a JavaScript snippet Google wouldn't index it. They would need a
wordpress plugin or something on the backend.

~~~
Implicated
...if the javascript snippet spat html onto the page...yes they would.

------
Void_
"yo wadup"

"dope post"

"send that shit out"...

I love it, it's so nice to read an honest text of marketing email for a
change.

------
jimmytucson
I just find their "yooo waddup homeeey" white-boy street talk obnoxious, if
not borderline offensive.

~~~
goldenkey
Waddup mah HackerNews son, u Dillon dat old phish raw? Yah affiliate profs be
sappin mah sentry, Kahn!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Cthulhu fhtagn.

------
wwwong
So 'growth hacking' has grown to encompass the run of the mill SEO strategy.

~~~
interstitial
Usually anything with the word 'hacking' in it means some worthless tripe the
talentless toss back and forth to prove how they "get it." The root word is
'hack' as in bad writer, not 'hacking' as in coding.

------
malloreon
I'm more disappointed RG considers Bieber "rock"

~~~
Grue3
Their "rock" site is a total joke. Searched for my favorite band, nothing at
all. I'll stick with plyrics.com.

~~~
dandelany
Uhm, it's literally brand new. Everyone's gotta start somewhere. You can add
the lyrics easily. Calling it a joke is a bit rude.

------
jrochkind1
I like that RapGenius had the chutzpah to allow that post exposing their
scheme -- a scheme unlikely to be smiled upon by Google -- to participate in
that very same scheme.

Except, have they actually tweeted the post as they promissed? Sadly, it does
not appear so, it would somehow be especially pleasing if they then tweeted
out a link to the post exposing their scheme.

------
colinbartlett
It's pretty sad actually. If they are resorting to _this_ to keep their
business afloat, they must be pretty desperate.

~~~
bigiain
I'd counter "desperate" with "out of touch and badly informed".

I have clients come to me quite regularly, having been advised to do something
exactly like this - often by a daughters boyfriend or the receptionists
brother, or some similarly highly qualified search marketing "professional".

I have a list of book marks and questions handy - and always ask them to go
back to their original source of the idea and ask questions like "What are the
implications of Google's
Hummingbird(|PayDayLoad|Panda|Penguin|Caffiene|Vince|Dewey) update on this
strategy?" and "Has Matt Cutts (or Vanessa Fox) ever discussed this idea?" \-
while having primed them to be able to judge whether the person giving the
advice knows anything about what they're talking about.

It _almost_ always works.

~~~
001sky
Notwithstanding all of these excellent points, is the timing. Jacking up
traffic or revenues or other valuation metrics at the end of the
{month/year/quarter} is a typical act of desperation/opportunism. It may
explain why the bothered to try an implement/get away with it. Like you say it
doesn't pass a certain smell test.

------
zntfdr
cached verison:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fjmarbach.com%2Frapgenius-
growth-hack-exposed)

------
morganb180
This is not "black hat" SEO. This is dumb SEO. Real black hats aren't so
obvious/careless/thoughtless.

------
benguild
Yikes. Black Hat SEO!

------
staunch
BlackHatSeoGenius.

~~~
dustywusty
Not exactly genius.

------
harvestmoon
This seems like a bad idea. Google is increasingly good at detecting and
punishing unnatural links. This type of tactic is not something I would
recommend; search optimization in 2013 is different than it used to be.

------
zoltar92
I'm so confused at this backlash, this is hacker news- mahbod, tom and the
rapgenius team have built an amazing product, and found a clever way to help
with search engine optimization. Good for them. They're optimizing EVERYONES
search experience- I think it's ridiculous in this case for them not to have
preferential page rank... If the average user would prefer them over a
competitor ( which I beg someone to argue) then who cares if they creatively
by-passed some ambiguous google guidelines.

------
mikkelewis
Asking people to manually put links in their blog post doesn't seem scalable.
In order to rank high for those keywords, you'll need many more backlinks than
just a few blog posts.

~~~
ajasmin
They're probably just experimenting at that point.

------
LordHumungous
I would've thought Google would be smart enough to ignore multiple anchor tags
pointing to the same domain on one page.

------
ysekand
I have just published a short but revealing post on this
[http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-
genius](http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius)

------
sbilstein
yea this is a well known not so nice way to up your google ranking.

------
rhizome
_Their business depends on their search engine ranking position (SERP’s) on
Google._

Am I the only one who thought, "SERP," meant, "Search Engine Result Page?"

------
normloman
"Growth Hacking" now a euphemism for Spamdexing.

------
whiddershins
Where are you getting search term volume data? Didn't google stop providing
specific numbers for search terms recently?

------
farnsworth
RapGenius is my favorite lyrics site, it's a shame they have to do crap like
this.

------
devanti
i dont see how they can beat azlyrics and metrolyrics in SEO. I've been using
them for over a decade

~~~
Implicated
You would be surprised at the volume of true organic links a site like rap
genius could generate due to the fact it's actually link-able.

RapGenius is cool, people share it. Azlyrics is not cool. (In my best Justin
Timberlake voice)

~~~
tomharari
You're very spot on here. I wrote a post a year ago on RapGenius and their
SEO: [http://moz.com/blog/how-i-would-do-seo-for-rap-
genius](http://moz.com/blog/how-i-would-do-seo-for-rap-genius)

------
Log1x
"growth hack" lol

------
SolarUpNote
That's whack!

------
bredren
Growth Hacks Gone Wild!

------
baby
I feel like the title is looking for drama where there is not. Anyone who has
had to deal with growth knows that you need backlinks to get a higher rank in
Google.

Sponsored blog posts are a thing since blog has been a thing.

