Rap Genius is Back on Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#41

Post by badman_ting » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:17 PM UTC

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.

If you think Rap Genius is stupid try using any other lyrics site. That's what is so special about it.

Is anyone else getting more and more suspicious of the scorn that people have been gratuitously heaping on RG? Like, did they run over everyone's dog?

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#42

Post by tinco » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:18 PM UTC

ashray wrote: post #38

tinco wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. It means that Google employees can do stuff manually, when asked by a friend or colleague. It says nothing about Google as a business favouring Rap Genius as a business.

The fact that you can request a google employee in a position to help you out to do so displays enormous leverage. Imagine a business in Germany, Vietnam, or even.. Texas having to do the same? It's pretty much impossible. This is what happens to everyone else out there. Which is what the parent is referring to when he says that google results aren't as neutral as they claim to be. They clearly favored someone with l…

Although I understand your concerns, this is just how the world works. If you know the president of the United States personally, there's a good chance he might spend a little of his good will smoothing out some bureaucratic processes for you. Nothing illegal or abusive, just the president asking official this-and-that why process so-and-so is taking so long for your company.

It's not a question of having to do the same, it just means that knowing a Google employee with some magic power is a valuable asset.

But yes, if you're a company that doesn't have this asset and you make a stupid mistake like Rap Genius did your site might be off Google for a month or two, possibly destroying your business.

I still don't follow how that makes Google not neutral in any significant way.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#43

Post by 001sky » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:21 PM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #32

I do not understand why people are offended that they came back quickly AFTER doing a bit of penance. Should their investors not have made calls? However, it should be noted that they did their part. One of my favorite quotes is this: "To save a drowning man, he must first give you his hand" If the Rap Genius guys were incompetent and did not do their part in removing the links so quickly (see main story for technica…

BTW, it also helped that people really found Rap Genius useful.

Er, what? You suggesting that Google execs are benchmarking the productivity of google searches? There are a million other "substitutes"...hence the shady SEO...

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#44

Post by hippich » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:21 PM UTC

I have to note, you have to be big to make comeback like this. Google provided disavow tool, but from my experience it simply not working. So it is manual action for sure.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#45

Post by hippich » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:22 PM UTC

ghostdiver wrote: post #28

Disavow tool actions take months to bring any effect(if any).

after a year I still see "unnatural" inbound links in webmaster tool. So I would say it have no effect.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#46

Post by OoTheNigerian » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

grimlck wrote: post #39

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #32

I do not understand why people are offended that they came back quickly AFTER doing a bit of penance. Should their investors not have made calls? However, it should be noted that they did their part. One of my favorite quotes is this: "To save a drowning man, he must first give you his hand" If the Rap Genius guys were incompetent and did not do their part in removing the links so quickly (see main story for technica…

Because it is a double standard. There are thousands of sites which get blacklisted by Google. I'm sure all of them fix their errors really quickly once they realize they are on the black list. And none of them get back on Google nearly as quickly as rap genius did. If Google applied these rules consistently with all websites, I would have no problem with it, but they don't. This breaks the myth that Silicon Valley i…

In life there is always a bias. When that bias is against you, you should learn how to fight back.

This is the PERFECT time for anyone who has done penance and is still being blacklisted by Google to document it all and go to the press.

There are A LOT of people/journalists waiting to jump on a story that shows Google has double standards.

But first they must be willing to do their part by documenting these facts and reaching out the journos. It will not come to them.

Like I quoted "to save a drowning man.....

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#47

Post by freehunter » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #11

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…

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.

I have never seen Rap Genius on Google, even before all of this. I've seen Metro Lyrics, AZ Lyrics, Song Meaning, etc. I've gone through pages of Google results because every lyrics site sucks, still haven't seen them. Everyone says Rap Genius is excellent, but I've never heard of them outside of HN. I find that odd.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#48

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

grimlck wrote: post #39

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #32

I do not understand why people are offended that they came back quickly AFTER doing a bit of penance. Should their investors not have made calls? However, it should be noted that they did their part. One of my favorite quotes is this: "To save a drowning man, he must first give you his hand" If the Rap Genius guys were incompetent and did not do their part in removing the links so quickly (see main story for technica…

Because it is a double standard. There are thousands of sites which get blacklisted by Google. I'm sure all of them fix their errors really quickly once they realize they are on the black list. And none of them get back on Google nearly as quickly as rap genius did. If Google applied these rules consistently with all websites, I would have no problem with it, but they don't. This breaks the myth that Silicon Valley i…

And many of those little sites have the excuse of ignorance - they read a dodgy SEO page or hired bad SEO people.

RapGenious had no excuse.

Still, I'm glad they're out of penalty now.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#49

Post by ashray » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:33 PM UTC

tinco wrote: post #42

ashray wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can request a google employee in a position to help you out to do so displays enormous leverage. Imagine a business in Germany, Vietnam, or even.. Texas having to do the same? It's pretty much impossible. This is what happens to everyone else out there. Which is what the parent is referring to when he says that google results aren't as neutral as they claim to be. They clearly favored someone with l…

Although I understand your concerns, this is just how the world works. If you know the president of the United States personally, there's a good chance he might spend a little of his good will smoothing out some bureaucratic processes for you. Nothing illegal or abusive, just the president asking official this-and-that why process so-and-so is taking so long for your company. It's not a question of having to do the s…

Okay, I see why you were not able to follow the problem.

>> stupid mistake like Rap Genius did your site might be off Google for a month or two, possibly destroying your business.

Sometimes businesses get wrongly blacklisted. Yes, it happens. They do get destroyed because of this, people do lose homes and jobs over this.

But this isn't because Google takes a month or two to sort this kind of thing out (a month or two is also not really acceptable - too long - given the impact Google has on a business). It's because experience shows that once you are on the wrong side of the big G, there's pretty much nothing you can do to get on the right side. It's no longer a question of a month or two, it's about registering a new domain, and starting from scratch. Sometimes you have to do this even when you didn't do anything wrong. This applies to almost every Google service whether it's Search, Adsense, Gmail, or anything else.

But Rap Genius definitely did something wrong. It was obvious for everyone to see. Yet, they managed to follow the 'recommendations' and get back in the game pretty quick. We know that this is probably because of connections because every business out there that gets blacklisted by Google will make sure that they are 'regulation-compliant' ASAP. Yet, many of them never manage to make it back and those that do take years at times.

Yes, knowing the US President helps, but that's provided you can get your work done without knowing him as well, in a reasonable time frame. Especially when it may make the difference between running a thriving business and being homeless.

QED: Monopolies are bad.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#50

Post by bushido » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #32

I do not understand why people are offended that they came back quickly AFTER doing a bit of penance. Should their investors not have made calls? However, it should be noted that they did their part. One of my favorite quotes is this: "To save a drowning man, he must first give you his hand" If the Rap Genius guys were incompetent and did not do their part in removing the links so quickly (see main story for technica…

I have mentioned this before in this thread, I'll do it again. I AM really happy for rap genius.

I also view this post from RapGenius as a kind of a PSA.

They used the reasonable doubt argument, and won, they could have kept quiet about it. But, they let people know that others could appeal on reasonable doubt too.

Which is commendable!

Unfortunately, the underlying message some people miss when they feel this is about bashing RapGenius is that it is not.

The outrage is against Google. More specifically about 3-4 things:

1. Google has penalized sites for way lesser, and refused to reconsider, even when reasonable doubt was jarringly obvious (ex. some sites affected by panda/penguin algo updates targeted towards content/blog farms were penalized for as less as having similar posts type of intra-site linking as all content farms were using it)

2. Google will never apply this reasonable doubt argument for anyone in the future, unless they have friends like the investors at Andreessen Horowitz.

3. Google has given no indication on how they modified the algorithm for this special circumstance, the question that people are thinking is more in regards with if this was a team decision, or an individual's special favor.

4. It's a slap on the face for all white hat SEO professionals, webmasters and founders who have been burned by Google's no bullshit policy. Again its not about the policy existing, that's just a fact everyone has to work with. It's because now enforcement is clearly optional dependent on connections.