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Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

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Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#111

Post by istorical »

codygman wrote: post #76
istorical wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's it like seeing the world in black and white?

Not sure. I'm too busy seeing all the gray lines that would be created by Google giving preferential treatment to those deemed more "important" when they could have stayed black and white.

My point is that punishing RapGenius despite the blatant use of the same tactics by hundreds of other big internet brands IS preferential treatment. The fact that RapGenius' competitors weren't punished is giving THEM preferential treatment.

Either punish everyone or punish no one.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#112

Post by codygman »

istorical wrote: post #111
codygman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure. I'm too busy seeing all the gray lines that would be created by Google giving preferential treatment to those deemed more "important" when they could have stayed black and white.

My point is that punishing RapGenius despite the blatant use of the same tactics by hundreds of other big internet brands IS preferential treatment. The fact that RapGenius' competitors weren't punished is giving THEM preferential treatment. Either punish everyone or punish no one.

You know I think you are right. We should also apply this to murderers.

Find and punish all the murders or let them all go free!

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#113

Post by JohnTHaller »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #104
JohnTHaller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A site with millions of uniques doesn't = revenue. Nor does it equal success, interest from investors, etc. Source: running a ~2m unique site right now.

I'm not trying to equate traffic to success or future income. But the original comment was snarky and implied that Rapgenius doesn't make money so there's no financial loss. This loss of traffic will hurt the future monetization of the site and its products.

In that case, it could hurt potential future revenue. But, again, that's something RapGenius should have thought more about before cheating.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#114

Post by siegecraft »

spindritf wrote: post #73

To recap. Google's algorithm is terrible, and despite having more PhDs on board than my uni, can be played by anyone with two brain cells and a mildly popular Twitter account. To rectify this, they crippled my search results by penalizing Rapgenius and instead pushing some AZlyrics junk that not only lacks annotations but is inaccurate. Seems like an easy fix, for the end user at least, add a keyword search for 'lyri…

First off, who cares if the top result now gives you no annotations? No one cared about annotations until rapgenius started adding them so people could know what the more obscure portions of rap lyrics meant and then they gamified the shit out of it so that every single word in a song would be annotated so that you now know the meaning of "I set fire to homes, arsonist" is because it helpfully explains that an arsonist is someone who sets fires. And then put annotations everywhere even on their stupid blog posts, it's like they just discovered HyperCard.

And how to find smoke on the water? Maybe put some quotes around it? http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%22smoke+on+the+water%22

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#115

Post by mtrimpe »

xiaoma wrote: post #86
mtrimpe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a company and you get to the #1 spot organically you can stop buying AdWords clicks for the same keywords.

Actually, adwords can be very profitable when you have a #1 organic ranking. http://searchengineland.com/google-research-even-if-you-rank...

True, but I don't think that applies equally strongly to ranking highly on low competition long tail results.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#116

Post by adrr »

captainmuon wrote: post #48
jmduke wrote: post #12

Hypothetical question: if we ("we" being nebulous) were to unveil that every other major lyrics site (azlyrics, metrolyrics, stlyrics, lyricsfreak, lyrics365, etc. etc.) uses the same SEO tactics, would they receive the same attention and punishment?

Someone should just do blackhat SEO for a bunch of those sites, and then Google would have to punish them too (because who could proove that they didn't do it themselves?) Or taking it one step further, use these tactics to promote a controversial institution or politician (without them knowing). Then "leak" it to Google, so they get punished. Then claim Google is censoring them. Finally enjoy the outrage :-)

Google webmaster tools lets you disregard back links which removes any benefit or penalty of the links. So if someone added your site to a known link farm, you can disregard those back links from affecting your ranking.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#117

Post by adventured »

scott_s wrote: post #22
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Ok, how can Rap Genius recover from this? They're one of the best (and least shady) lyrics sites on the net. They acted immorally, yes, but is justifiable to summarily execute their company? Google has a domineering position in the market, and it's a bit ironic that people were quick to call for Microsoft to be split into multiple companies about a decade ago, yet nobody bats an eye when Google exercises their power.…

I think that tech people talk about Google's power constantly.

Before Google it was Microsoft. Before Microsoft it was IBM.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#118

Post by late2part »

ddoolin wrote: post #18
joeblau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just need to follow the rules. I think once Google takes them out of the sin bin, they should regain their ranking.

I agree with this. They should be fine once they're reinstated.

How "fine" will they be? If they had their rankings due to surreptitious means, and they can't use those nefarious means, how will they be fine?

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#119

Post by Greenisus »

dkuntz2 wrote: post #100
Greenisus wrote: post #27

What should Google do in this situation? I fully understand them murdering Rap Genius in their indexes, but it also hurts Google since Rap Genius actually has the best content. First result for "jay-z holy grail lyrics" Google: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jayz/holygrail.html Bing: http://rapgenius.com/Jay-z-holy-grail-lyrics The Bing result is better (though both are valid). I would suspect that most sites pulling…

Is the Bing result really "better"? Lots of people would rather not have the annotations... Additionally, with AdBlock on, AZLyrics makes only 21 requests and takes 1.03 seconds to load completely on my machine. RapGenius (still with AdBlock on) takes 27 seconds to load, with 208 requests. Based solely on that I'd rather use AZLyrics than RapGenius.

Yeah, I suppose it's subjective. I personally think the RapGenius result is better, but you make a valid point about the performance and simplicity of the AZLyrics result.

Re: Rapgenius Uniques Fall 90%

#120

Post by sejje »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #65
sejje wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I google "eminem lyrics" they don't show up in the results. Fine, whatever, seo penalty. When I google "rapgenius eminem" they don't appear in the results. That's pretty close to censorship. I'm not necessarily against it, but I don't disagree with the usage of the term.

>When I google "rapgenius eminem" they don't appear in the results. That's pretty close to censorship. You can also go to rapgenius.com and search for eminem yourself. Or navigate a few pages in the search results until you find the link. Think of it this way, if I want to be listed in a phonebook but I'm an obviously shady actor and the phonebook company refuses, is that censorship? You play by the rules if you want…

Being denied entry in a phone book is censorship. It doesn't matter if it's merited or not.

I get that you play the rules. They're being censored for not playing by the rules.

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