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.
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.
They're aren't currently monetizing their site at all, no ads, so how will it cost them millions?
The VC's already know that the founders are a bunch of fruitcakes. I think they'll be right back where they left off after the penalty is lifted, probably in 30 days.
When the same thing happens to other small websites than those websites are literally destroyed, no 30 day penalties, banned for life. Shut down your website and start again.
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...
The penalty that has been applied will degrade heavily with time. Rap Genius will have an opportunity to rebuild their ranking in the coming months. I suspect they'll be fine, as the product is solid; so clean-up in aisle three, and then business as usual. They're also very well capitalized to withstand this.
>> "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.
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.
Their "proof" was a load of crap. AZLyrics has several lyric websites for specific genres (punk, metal, and so on) which are actually really good if you're a fan of that specific genre. Of course these sites link to each other because they're a part of the same company. It isn't anything like what RG is doing.
More like... when your entire business is built on google rankings maybe you should consider reading their rules. Closely.
This is a case of Rap Genius brazenly breaking the rules and thinking they can get away with it because of their gilded connections (their spoiled frat boy persona seems to reflect the reality of their behaviour: thinking they're too rich and connected for the rules to apply).
Acting like a clown, like Donald Trump, definitely gets you money and exposure. But personally I wouldn't take any amount of money if it meant I became a person making public rape jokes, making startup culture even more sexist, regressive, pathetic... not to mention racist. Their tongue-in-cheek appropriation of black english is mocking both the rap community as well as the poor black AND white communities that actually use that language for serious (and have no chance of going to elite schools let alone getting a half decent education).
Anyway Rap Genius is a nice service (and I'm a fan of hip hop) but the behavior of the founders is disgusting. Shameful behavior does not suddenly become cool just because it can make you a hundred million dollars. Capitalists always sell away their values eventually. It's sick.
Know what's cooler than a billion dollars? Being a decent human being.
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):
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.
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).
It doesn't matter that they had the best experience and content because Google was forced to do this to set an example and show that they aren't playing favorites. Imagine other companies who will start testing more black hat strategies with the expectation that it's okay as long as they believe they're better than sites ranking higher than them.
You know what? If they actually are better, then that's only a good thing in my opinion. Who cares about "fairness" here, we want the best results. That's one way of looking at it anyway.
I agree it was what they should've done. At the very least it was the right direction. Hopefully their reputation is enough to keep them afloat while they build up again.
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.
Definitely amateurish. I shuddered a bit at the language used in their reply e-mail for the affiliate program. It's nearly condescending and, and...well, you get it.
Right on. I'd use a widget to embed lyrics with audio in every blog post if they made it easy. May be integrate with spotify. And create a Wordpress plugin.
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.
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?
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 among others). One described here is very interesting: 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Now, what about actually getting quality site when I search for "Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics"? The first page now is now just full of low quality lyric sites.
Well, really, are they? I have Adblock, and really the sites I get from "Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics" are fine if I was just interested in the lyrics of that particular song.
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.
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.
It makes sense that a site needs business model to be sustainable, but Rap Genius is still searching for or developing their model. It does not appear to be based on displaying ads alongside lyrics, and that also is not the main point of their site.
Rap Genius was originally called Rap Exegesis, and while it has a lot of rap lyrics it is a community supported text annotation site, with an ambition far beyond a lyric repository. They have a great deal of content beyond rap, or even lyrics in general. They have poetry and literature, announcements, and press releases (I'd love to see them make a Rap Genius page of Ulysses with the contents of Ulysses Annotated). They have a platform and are building a community. That's why it's attractive to VCs, and that's why it's something beyond the eyesores one mostly lands on searching for lyrics.
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.
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.
> 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.
The seller sets the price. People either don't buy it or acquire it without paying. But the buyers don't set the price. In this case the buyer is the website and they have to pay the price since they are using the product openly and publicly.
>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.
Who is this magically being that pays the writer to write the song exactly? It isn't a secondary market it's a primary market. The song writer has created something(A song!) and the site wants to use that song. They are dealing with the song writer or copyright holder that is a first sale.
That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is. Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.
> 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?
> 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.
In the vast majority of cases this is wrong. Most songwriters do not get paid to write songs. They get paid only when they receive royalties on the reproduction of their song.
This is good for society because it means that the songs that everyone likes will provide the most reward--so songwriters have a strong incentive to write the best songs they can.
No they don't; they might legally be required to pay, but legal != deserves. Copyright and patent laws are wrong and create artificial scarcity to create a monopoly where there should be none. Just because something is the law does not make it just or right; they don't deserve anything.
Then clarify because so far all you've done is said "People don't deserve this! Copying isn't stealing. They shouldn't get paid for this" then when anyone challenges you they get the reply "Thats not what I meant" or some snarky comment about their comprehension.
Clarify what. I could send you a bitcoin, look, non-phisical trade. If you want to critique something, it's up to you to make a clear critique, not me to figure out what you mean when the words you wrote are trivially and obviously false. When you infer I mean things I didn't say, it's not snarky to point out I didn't say that or mean that. I said what I meant, deciphering meaning was not an exercise left for the reader, it's right there in the words I wrote.
You're wrong. Saying that music/lyrics has no market value is just as stupid as saying that just because I personally don't want to pay for a Mercedes Benz means it has no value, and I can take one freely.
Clearly SOME people are willing to pay for the right to use lyrics, ie. singers, record labels, etc. Just because a single individual, ex. rapgenius, doesn't want to pay for the music/lyrics, which they legally are obliged to do, doesn't mean that music/lyrics have no market value. There is a market value which has been established, and which people pay for. It just means that if they don't pay for the lyrics, they are stealing it.
You're right -- no one deserves to get paid simply for working (i.e. creating a work). But everyone deserves the opportunity to sell that work. When someone else takes what someone does, it diminishes the value of that opportunity. Copyrights protect that opportunity.
> But everyone deserves the opportunity to sell that work.
We agree.
> When someone else takes what someone does, it diminishes the value of that opportunity.
No it doesn't, those people wouldn't have paid anyway. Copying is not theft. This is the same tired argument the MPAA's been trying to make and it's just a sign of the establishment not adjusting to the new reality that distribution is not a profitable industry anymore.
> No it doesn't, those people wouldn't have paid anyway.
You can't know all of the ways they will possibly make money from the content. Justin Bieber may want to charge Apple more for including vetted lyrics in iTunes. But why would Apple give Justin Bieber money when they can just copy the content from Rap Genius? Or cut a deal with Rap Genius for a feed?
> distribution is not a profitable industry anymore
This is where you're missing the point. You see the price as paying for distribution, but it's really about the value of the content. Historically, the two were inextricably linked by a physical medium. Now they are completely separate things with different prices and costs, and are almost unrelated to one another. Just because one goes close to zero, doesn't mean the other does, too.
Nor do I care about the ways people like to think up to ban other people from doing stuff. If you don't want your work copied, don't publish it. The whole copyright/patent system is a ridiculous absurdity based on the false premise that creative people require monetary incentive to do anything. When technology renders enforcement of laws impractical, then the laws are simply bad. Copying is not theft, creators are not entitled to anything, they deserve no protection for their published works at all.
Art doesn't have to be a business and art will be created regardless of whether artists can profit in perpetuity from their work. The notion that ideas and words are property and can be owned is perverse doublespeak meant to trick people into transferring their gut instincts about physical property onto things that quite simply are not property.
Performers should make money from performing, not being paid forever because the government created artificial monopolies on words and ideas.
Are you for real? The world values the lyrics/songs, and are searching for them. There is a system in place to compensate artists, and "OMG DISRUPTION PIGGYBACK" is getting really tired.
Commenting on established artworks with a cute little javascript popup doesn't add anything to the original art. If I want to check lyrics, I am looking for the lyrics, not a popup that shows a picture of a ham when I hover over 'ham'. RG doesn't even have good content, just a bunch of smartass nonsense and obvious comments.
Are you saying writers of poetry deserve to be paid whenever I simply want to know what their poem says?
Is that close enough for you to see the similarity, or do I need to explain how songs and poems are functionally indistinguishable and further how poetry and prose is functionally indistinguishable; and therefore how written works are functionally indistinguishable and if you support copyright in one but not the other your perspective is logically untenable?
Or perhaps you'd like to explain to me why a poem should lose its written copyright rights when someone sings it.
Songs are (in general) not "musicized" poetry. It's closer to a movie. People work on it and it sells as a whole. Lyrics + music + singing or screenplay + scene + acting (simplified). I don't see why I should pay anyone for quoting a movie. Nor I don't thing lyrics of a song are worth anything as standalone. Those who wrote the screenplay/lyrics have deal with owner of the final product and are paid from that (or were paid once and that is one extra reason to not pay them over and over).
It's obviously wrong what Rap Genius did, no doubt about it. They should not have used these techniques. But, it's not a bizarre line of thinking to think of whether the person who posted it finds it to be worth it after the fact given the severity of the repercussion (which could effectively ruin the whole business).
RG's techniques were not honest and were costing other sites that were using legitimate techniques and playing by the rules their ranking in Google's search results (and maybe even revenue).
mlyang: It is absolutely a bizarre first reaction to imply that the reporter should feel culpable for the harm that RapGenius caused themselves.
If RapGenius is ruined that easily, RG didn't have a real business to begin with. Their scheme was something that would've certainly triggered Google's ban-hammer sooner or later; the only question was timing. My bet is that RG will reexamine and improve their distribution playbook. I say this because I don't think a16z would invest in a company whose distribution plans consisted solely of SEO.
But you could be correct. Maybe RG is such a fragile company that this nearly inevitable setback is enough to kill them.
p.s. just an FYI: it's generally considered bad form to delete a post that has already garnered responses, especially if those responses are critical.
I never implied that the reporter was culpable. He isn't, RapGenius 100% is. But if I were in the original poster's shoes-- for me at least-- I would've initially found breaking the story to be fun and interesting, but seeing how Rap Genius as a business is basically screwed for the foreseeable future, I would've definitely thought twice. I agree that Rap Genius is 100% wrong in its shady tactics, but as a lot of the other commenters in this above thread (who have not been down-voted to oblivion) have stated, this is a pretty harsh punishment on Google's part. Knowing the harshness of the punishment after the fact, I was just pondering as to how the original poster felt, that's all.
Perhaps you didn't intend to imply it, but unfortunately that message was communicated to several of us. Thank you for clarifying that you don't hold that view. This apparent miscommunication emphasizes the importance of not deleting (and not substantially editing) posts once they've garnered attention.
I, for one, hope the author feels no remorse for their article. It was a fun and interesting article, and they reported the story well.
I continue to hold the belief that if this incident creates a material problem for RG, then RG was already a ticking time bomb. That said, I have plenty of faith that RG will weather the storm, and that perhaps this will be a wake-up call that inspires them to do something more creative and valuable than a spammy link-swap.
The person that posted it should be a complete opportunist about the matter and put it on their resume and apply to Google or something.It would be even funnier if they offered publicly to be a paid consultant for rap genius.
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.
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
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.
I was thinking something along the same lines. PageRank was great back in the day, but in today's world, the link is not the only way of determining whether a site is good or not. I wonder if a rethink of the HITS model or a complete overhaul of search ranking based on social and reputation cues is in order?
StackOverflow does well despite few people linking to them because the search terms are so niche, if I search for a fairly generic programming term I maybe get one StackOverflow post in the first 10 but if I search for an error message, they'll all be SO. Other StackExchange sites maybe don't benefit quite so well from that long tail, though. Sites like Quora presumably have the same problem.
It's interesting how sites like these, and in turn mobile apps, are turning information into vertical silos (which want you to stay within their bounds) rather than the horizontal web of equality we're used to.
The genius of the original PageRank is that links serve as machine actionable artifacts of 'social and reputation cues'.
But of course Google's algorithm is way more complicated now, and takes into account all sorts of things. They of course have all sorts of smart experienced people working on improving it, and apparently still determine that links should count for a lot.
I'd guess there are actually lots of links to stackoverflow.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It's not about whether or not google is useful for finding this particular site and this particular niche, it's about making sure their search results overall aren't being gamed. Sucks for RG (though they pretty much deserved it here) but better for all of us that use search engines to find good content, which is pretty much all of us.
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.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 276 ms ] threadOutch, this is going to hurt them.
>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...
There are two lessons here: (1) don't do shady shit, (2) Google should only be one of many sources of traffic.
And the greatest gift of all was to be schadenfreude.
For people who act like arrogant jerks were punished severely that day.
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.
This is a case of Rap Genius brazenly breaking the rules and thinking they can get away with it because of their gilded connections (their spoiled frat boy persona seems to reflect the reality of their behaviour: thinking they're too rich and connected for the rules to apply).
Acting like a clown, like Donald Trump, definitely gets you money and exposure. But personally I wouldn't take any amount of money if it meant I became a person making public rape jokes, making startup culture even more sexist, regressive, pathetic... not to mention racist. Their tongue-in-cheek appropriation of black english is mocking both the rap community as well as the poor black AND white communities that actually use that language for serious (and have no chance of going to elite schools let alone getting a half decent education).
Anyway Rap Genius is a nice service (and I'm a fan of hip hop) but the behavior of the founders is disgusting. Shameful behavior does not suddenly become cool just because it can make you a hundred million dollars. Capitalists always sell away their values eventually. It's sick.
Know what's cooler than a billion dollars? Being a decent human being.
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"
I think you're right, that depending on how long this lasts, they could be in a world of hurt.
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.
(http://searchengineland.com/google-is-looking-into-rap-geniu...)
Most surprisingly, even
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 among others). One described here is very interesting: 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.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
Rap Genius was originally called Rap Exegesis, and while it has a lot of rap lyrics it is a community supported text annotation site, with an ambition far beyond a lyric repository. They have a great deal of content beyond rap, or even lyrics in general. They have poetry and literature, announcements, and press releases (I'd love to see them make a Rap Genius page of Ulysses with the contents of Ulysses Annotated). They have a platform and are building a community. That's why it's attractive to VCs, and that's why it's something beyond the eyesores one mostly lands on searching for lyrics.
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.
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.
>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.
Who is this magically being that pays the writer to write the song exactly? It isn't a secondary market it's a primary market. The song writer has created something(A song!) and the site wants to use that song. They are dealing with the song writer or copyright holder that is a first sale.
That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is. Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.
I never said they did, please do try and comprehend before simply repeating yourself.
> That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is.
False.
> Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.
This is a belief you hold, not a fact.
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?
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.
In the vast majority of cases this is wrong. Most songwriters do not get paid to write songs. They get paid only when they receive royalties on the reproduction of their song.
This is good for society because it means that the songs that everyone likes will provide the most reward--so songwriters have a strong incentive to write the best songs they can.
Clearly SOME people are willing to pay for the right to use lyrics, ie. singers, record labels, etc. Just because a single individual, ex. rapgenius, doesn't want to pay for the music/lyrics, which they legally are obliged to do, doesn't mean that music/lyrics have no market value. There is a market value which has been established, and which people pay for. It just means that if they don't pay for the lyrics, they are stealing it.
Well since I didn't say that, you're wrong.
We agree.
> When someone else takes what someone does, it diminishes the value of that opportunity.
No it doesn't, those people wouldn't have paid anyway. Copying is not theft. This is the same tired argument the MPAA's been trying to make and it's just a sign of the establishment not adjusting to the new reality that distribution is not a profitable industry anymore.
You can't know all of the ways they will possibly make money from the content. Justin Bieber may want to charge Apple more for including vetted lyrics in iTunes. But why would Apple give Justin Bieber money when they can just copy the content from Rap Genius? Or cut a deal with Rap Genius for a feed?
> distribution is not a profitable industry anymore
This is where you're missing the point. You see the price as paying for distribution, but it's really about the value of the content. Historically, the two were inextricably linked by a physical medium. Now they are completely separate things with different prices and costs, and are almost unrelated to one another. Just because one goes close to zero, doesn't mean the other does, too.
Art doesn't have to be a business and art will be created regardless of whether artists can profit in perpetuity from their work. The notion that ideas and words are property and can be owned is perverse doublespeak meant to trick people into transferring their gut instincts about physical property onto things that quite simply are not property.
Performers should make money from performing, not being paid forever because the government created artificial monopolies on words and ideas.
Commenting on established artworks with a cute little javascript popup doesn't add anything to the original art. If I want to check lyrics, I am looking for the lyrics, not a popup that shows a picture of a ham when I hover over 'ham'. RG doesn't even have good content, just a bunch of smartass nonsense and obvious comments.
Never said they didn't, try understanding what was sad before flying off the handle.
(Seriously though, this is something absolutely different)
Is that close enough for you to see the similarity, or do I need to explain how songs and poems are functionally indistinguishable and further how poetry and prose is functionally indistinguishable; and therefore how written works are functionally indistinguishable and if you support copyright in one but not the other your perspective is logically untenable?
Or perhaps you'd like to explain to me why a poem should lose its written copyright rights when someone sings it.
The person who posted it has no obligation to white wash YC funded companies.
If RapGenius is ruined that easily, RG didn't have a real business to begin with. Their scheme was something that would've certainly triggered Google's ban-hammer sooner or later; the only question was timing. My bet is that RG will reexamine and improve their distribution playbook. I say this because I don't think a16z would invest in a company whose distribution plans consisted solely of SEO.
But you could be correct. Maybe RG is such a fragile company that this nearly inevitable setback is enough to kill them.
p.s. just an FYI: it's generally considered bad form to delete a post that has already garnered responses, especially if those responses are critical.
I, for one, hope the author feels no remorse for their article. It was a fun and interesting article, and they reported the story well.
I continue to hold the belief that if this incident creates a material problem for RG, then RG was already a ticking time bomb. That said, I have plenty of faith that RG will weather the storm, and that perhaps this will be a wake-up call that inspires them to do something more creative and valuable than a spammy link-swap.
you Would be to outflank
google And fill the blanks
With lyrics that lank
them back out of the dunk-tank;
Justin Bieber lyrics CLICK HERE
[bieber heartbreaker lyrics rap genius] or even [bieber heartbreaker lyrics rapgenius.com]
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.
StackOverflow does well despite few people linking to them because the search terms are so niche, if I search for a fairly generic programming term I maybe get one StackOverflow post in the first 10 but if I search for an error message, they'll all be SO. Other StackExchange sites maybe don't benefit quite so well from that long tail, though. Sites like Quora presumably have the same problem.
It's interesting how sites like these, and in turn mobile apps, are turning information into vertical silos (which want you to stay within their bounds) rather than the horizontal web of equality we're used to.
(Also, the interns are pretty well paid, but yes. They start out as autocompleters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB_X38YSxQ)
But of course Google's algorithm is way more complicated now, and takes into account all sorts of things. They of course have all sorts of smart experienced people working on improving it, and apparently still determine that links should count for a lot.
I'd guess there are actually lots of links to stackoverflow.
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.
Really? What makes you claim that?
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...
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.
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.
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.
Google wants to make a point, they turn off the traffic faucet, Rap Genius repents, and things slowly return back to normal.
They don't even rank for "rap genius" right now. Their Facebook page does though.
Btw., duckduckgo still shows rapgenius on top.
In the short term. In the long term, this move probably has prevented a lot of black hat SEO and spam from happening on the web.
At least https://duckduckgo.com/?q=it+was+a+good+day+rapgenius seems to work fine.