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Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

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Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#31

Post by benched »

So, the best lyric site by a mile no longer shows up in ordinary Google lyric searches. As a music fanatic, searching lyrics is something I do all day long every day, by the way - and when I search lyrics in Google, I really want to go to rap genius. Anyway, supposedly this degradation of Google had to happen to make a public example, and most of us are ok with it because the founders of RG are known to be kind of jerky and unprofessional, and we loves professionalism cause the more we love it, the more it makes us look professional.

Just checking I'm still on the right planet. Yup, I definitely am.

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#32

Post by yeukhon »

znowi wrote: post #13

We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They’ve been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make. As if they don't know what they did. These guys are toxic. I'd ban them for a year.

Give them the credit for trying to resolve a problem. Are you telling me if you run a business you would never this kind of mistake?

It is a good idea to explain why they did it and what they were thinking, instead of just say "damn I screwed up." I rather hear people explain to me why they did it and they now think they screw up. It is part of resolution.

If you don't care about explanation (or excuse if you think that's the right erm), well, fine.

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#34

Post by notdrunkatall »

sliverstorm wrote: post #23
flexie wrote: post #8

Still, the real story here is that almost all small businesses depend on the mercy of one giant corporation. This Google monstrosity / police man should be split up into smaller, competing search engines.

Why do they depend on Google's mercy? What does Google provide them, that they must have and cannot be had elsewhere? To phrase differently and hint at what I am suggesting- if Google provides something that companies cannot live without, what did companies do before there was Google ?

>what did companies do before there was Google?

They didn't.

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#35

Post by aroman »

llamataboot wrote: post #21
aroman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think it's an inherently monopolistic industry. In the current state of affairs (i.e. web browser interfaces and mobile phone integration), it's quite inconvenient for people to switch up their search engine regularly, or even use multiple ones regularly. With say, supermarkets, it's pretty easy to shop at Acme one day, Trader Joes another, and Superfresh the third. Search engines aren't like this, or at le…

bang commands on DDG come pretty close. I use DDG as my primary search, but in reality I use about 20 different commands for specific searches on any given day, including quite a bit of google search and wolfram alpha. Not saying these commands will ever see wide use, but I find it a convenient platform for lots of different search engines.

That's a really good point. Every few months I try to adapt to using DDG as my primary search, but I always find myself throwing a !g into my searches, which kind of defeats the purpose. I'm curious, for what kind of searches do you find DDG's own search results to be good enough (or better) than Google's? What kind of searches make you bang to Google?

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#37

Post by HCIdivision17 »

flexie wrote: post #8

Still, the real story here is that almost all small businesses depend on the mercy of one giant corporation. This Google monstrosity / police man should be split up into smaller, competing search engines.

Remember, Google is quite large, and hence also inhomogenous. Some time ago the Chrome browser team did something that could be construed as a service-for-links campaign, an the PageRank team penalized Chrome for two weeks (if I recall correctly - commentary on this [0]).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3422386

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#38

Post by hnriot »

flexie wrote: post #8

Still, the real story here is that almost all small businesses depend on the mercy of one giant corporation. This Google monstrosity / police man should be split up into smaller, competing search engines.

"small businesses depend on the mercy of one giant corporation" - this can't really be blamed on google. It's hardly their fault they are the best at search. If someone comes along with something better people will use that. on the interwebs there's no such thing as brand loyalty. Going forward the internet's biggest problem is security. With hackers pulling millions of credit cards from Target and seldom a day goes by without reading about some big corp getting hacked, people will more and more look to big corporations like google that can hire the best security minds for their online protection. Using google gives you some degree of trust that the sites in the results are there for a reason, people they aren't scams or bogus companies. Google is the internet's filter, and in this case with RG I am not sure that i don't side with google. There are plenty of alternatives to RG. I don't see why anyone would care much about song lyrics, but it's not like RG are the only game in town.

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#39

Post by mbel »

benched wrote: post #31

So, the best lyric site by a mile no longer shows up in ordinary Google lyric searches. As a music fanatic, searching lyrics is something I do all day long every day, by the way - and when I search lyrics in Google, I really want to go to rap genius. Anyway, supposedly this degradation of Google had to happen to make a public example, and most of us are ok with it because the founders of RG are known to be kind of je…

> and when I search lyrics in Google, I really want to go to rap genius.

So, isn't it easier (and faster) to go directly to rapgenius or create custom search keyword in the browser, than ask google for the lyrics?

Re: Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

#40

Post by ryanhuff »

yeukhon wrote: post #32
znowi wrote: post #13

We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They’ve been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make. As if they don't know what they did. These guys are toxic. I'd ban them for a year.

Give them the credit for trying to resolve a problem. Are you telling me if you run a business you would never this kind of mistake? It is a good idea to explain why they did it and what they were thinking, instead of just say "damn I screwed up." I rather hear people explain to me why they did it and they now think they screw up. It is part of resolution. If you don't care about explanation (or excuse if you think t…

What company leadership allowed to happen shows a real disrespect for one of the primary risks to the business. Without having the explanation that you described, the two most likely explanations in my mind are either this was standard practice all along (finally got caught), or somebody made one of those epic fail business decisions. If its #1, I doubt we'll see a clear explanation. If its #2, somebody may have to fall on the sword as the "poster child" of bad business decisions.
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