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Rap Genius is Back on Google

news.rapgenius.com

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Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#21

Post by citricsquid »

pstack wrote: post #20
rdl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special. In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed. Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there, especially since Rap Genius was cooperative, technically competent, and aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius? It's just a bunch of stupid rap lyrics. So what? In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway? I run across Rap Genius now and then and have always considered it to be spam, just like yahoo answers, ehow, and mahalo pages.

http://news.rapgenius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-hor...

    Rap Genius [...] and have always considered it to be spam
That's pretty absurd...

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#22

Post by ronaldx »

tinco wrote: post #17
jarnix wrote: post #9

This post is complete bullshit. Of course they have relations. Maybe they cleaned their backlinks, but still I cannot believe how they got back so fast in SERP. Anyway, Franz Kafka would die again if he saw his text on this site ( http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Franz-kafka-a-dream-lyrics ), so let's just forget about this site and don't use it.

Don't be so spiteful. It might very well be that they have relations, don't make it sound like that's a bad thing. Besides that they also seem to just have cleaned up their act very thoroughly. And about Franz Kafka, I think he'd turn in his grave if he heard about how petty people like yourself criticize a website that tries to make literary criticism of his work digestible and enjoyable for the masses.

> It might very well be that they have relations, don't make it sound like that's a bad thing.

It is a bad thing here: it shows that Google is apparently willing to act preferentially to favoured businesses, undermining the idea that search results are provided with neutrality.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#23

Post by ScottWhigham »

pstack wrote: post #20
rdl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special. In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed. Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there, especially since Rap Genius was cooperative, technically competent, and aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius? It's just a bunch of stupid rap lyrics. So what? In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway? I run across Rap Genius now and then and have always considered it to be spam, just like yahoo answers, ehow, and mahalo pages.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius?

Why? You've no doubt read 10x reasons people here have said so (in the other threads). Do you just want to argue? If you don't agree, fine, but clearly a large and vocal group does. So what? Move along - find other things to care about.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#24

Post by bushido »

rdl wrote: post #13
bushido wrote: post #8

This is great for Rap Genius. But this truly saddens me as well. I cannot for the life of me understand how they were able to fix ten-of-thousands of backlinks and other shady practices and get back in the good graces of Google so darn quickly. Frankly I do not know a single other legitimate(+with good traffic) site who was able to get back in the good graces of Google after algorithm updates without spending many ma…

You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special. In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed. Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there, especially since Rap Genius was cooperative, technically competent, and aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

> Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there

That's exactly how I feel too. Though the incentive for google is very unclear, the lack of clarity is explored further below.

> You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special.

Not saying Rap Genius is not a special lyrics start-up. Not even saying that it would not have been a good candidate for any VC financing them.

Though, Definitely saying that the special case leniency shown by Google sure make it seem like having Andreessen Horowitz is the only thing different between Rap Genius and scores of sites before with this and similar situations.

> In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed.

And its not when other good sources are removed because they were link bombed or their content was scraped more than their competitors?

> Rap Genius was cooperative

Find me one person in their situation who would not be. It was to either co-operate or die.

> Rap Genius was technically competent

How?

> Aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

I am judging Google.

I have nothing against Rap Genius founders, nor their "rapper swag persona" and I'll believe you when you say the are nice guys.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#25

Post by benjaminwootton »

I've followed SEO on and off for years and I wouldn't have thought that their strategy of allowing people to generate and embed links back to the site was shady at all. I even recommended something similar a few years ago in good faith.

They're useful, relevant, and it just seems like good marketing. These things will spread organically and drive traffic even if you remove the SEO benefits.

Could you say that Scribd or Slideshare are doing something similar by allowing people to embed documents in their websites along with a no follow link back to their site?

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#26

Post by ashray »

bushido wrote: post #19
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're back on Google, but keep in mind that they're seemingly not in a great position. Googling "justin beiber lyrics" doesn't show Rapgenius. Neither does "lady gaga lyrics" or "tupac lyrics". In all three cases, azlyrics.com has the top spot.

Edit: the reply is to the now reacted comment: > They're a startup, and this was a problem which was either going to kill them or be surmounted quickly. Naturally, they surmounted it quickly. Google laid out a clear plan of action for them. Is it hard to believe they finished it quickly? Yeah, most of the other sites I refer to were also start-ups by almost any definition. They did not quite finish their action plan.…

I just want to add that this attitude doesn't even reflect poorly solely on Google Search. Adsense is another product that if you get kicked out of, you have zero recourse.

What about that gmail fiasco a few months ago? Users got blocked out of G services for not providing their real names and had no recourse to get their data for several weeks/months.

Just goes to show that in several cases it's not what you know but who you know.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#27

Post by h1fra »

The tech part is obvsiouly here to calm down people from Hacker News and make them say "Oh this part was good, after all they are not so bad". It's just a shitty scraper but they talk about it like it was a revolutionnary script...

There is no way they could get back so fast and so easily on google.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#29

Post by ashray »

Soviet wrote: post #2

I wonder how long it would take for any other website without 15 mln backing and direct line to Google to return.

As someone who knows folks who got wrongly blacklisted.. Well, you pretty much never get back. No matter what you do.

You're lucky if you get a decent reply from customer support to begin with..

Your best bet is to change domains, fill in a redirect and try to build up backlinks again. It'll take a year or two and hopefully no competitor pops up in your space.

Or, you can try and get Andreesen-Horowitz interested in your business.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#30

Post by streptomycin »

pstack wrote: post #20
rdl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special. In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed. Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there, especially since Rap Genius was cooperative, technically competent, and aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius? It's just a bunch of stupid rap lyrics. So what? In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway? I run across Rap Genius now and then and have always considered it to be spam, just like yahoo answers, ehow, and mahalo pages.

In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway?

They have had some legal troubles, but are trying to sign licensing deals http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/media/rap-genius-...

However, if their licensing deals are anything like what other sites have to pay for lyrics, it's going to significantly (entirely?) cut into their profit margin.

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