Rap Genius is Back on Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#131

Post by aaronwall » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

unbeli wrote: post #126

JohnTHaller wrote: post #95

Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought backlinks to artificially inflate their pagerank. They knew they were cheating but they did it anyway. They got caught. And they were hit with a manual action on Google. Sounds good so far. But that's where it stops. RapGenius, using the connections they have fr…

Read the article. They are back because they did a lot of work finding all these bad links and using Google’s disavowal tool to kill them, not because of their VC funding or whatever other influence you think they have on Google.

Nice try.

Removing 200 links out of nearly 200,000 links in a holiday week is not a lot of work. In fact, Google has told others waiting to be reconsidered that the wait time is multiple weeks. https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/statuses/418734227228606464

Further, some sites which submitted reconsideration requests before RapGenius was penalized have not received a response. And in many such cases those other sites:

had far fewer links, removed a far greater quantity of links, disavowed a far greater quantity of links & were involved in something that was nowhere near as overt/intentional on the behalf of the webmaster (I've seen cases where the notices came after a payday loan hacker mixed in someone else's sites with their own links to create cover for their work)

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#132

Post by aaronwall » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

joelrunyon wrote: post #101

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only problem with this is that there's no real course of communication with google. They make it a matter of policy to not provide customer service.

"in 2003 when Denise Griffin, the person in charge of Google’s small customer-support team, asked Page for a larger staff. Instead, he told her that the whole idea of customer support was ridiculous. Rather than assuming the unscalable task of answering users one by one, Page said, Google should enable users to answer one another’s questions." http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/3/

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#133

Post by Crito » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

mtrimpe wrote: post #93

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I think of a a lot of things my users would search for and try to create valuable information for them concerning those queries... is that great content or are those doorway pages? Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it…

What's your point here? That you find these guidelines so specific that they don't leave any room for interpretation?

I think the point here is that this is only a complicated topic if you are trying to follow the letter but not the spirit of the guidelines.

So you can't figure out exactly how you can game the system... boo hoo.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#134

Post by argonaut » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #128

argonaut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the point where you start suggesting that Matt Cutts was bribed [or accepted a favor], you know you've left the land of rationality and entered into wholesale speculation. Your argument is on the face ridiculous, but just to be clear: 1) Matt Cutts is very wealthy and doesn't need any favors. 2) Matt Cutts once penalized Google's own Chome site for improper links. If there were ever any conflict of interest that e…

> At the point where you start suggesting that Matt Cutts was bribed When did I do that? I have not and am not suggesting that Matt Cutts or anyone at Google took a bribe of any kind whatsoever. I have on the other hand said that there is some uncertainty if favors may have been given/used to expedite the process of re-listing. Which if true, in itself looks really bad, simply because of the position of authority Goo…

You haven't addressed my argument at all. Replace bribery with favors, and my argument stands.

I used both interchangeably (see point #2), and I've edited for clarification.

If you want to keep going on the overly semantic line of argument, bribery = gifts, not just money.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#135

Post by Taek » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

robbrown451 wrote: post #130

skrebbel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting something. As a search engine user, I don't care whether the search engine firm is "fair", whether their rules apply equally to everyone or not. It's not a country, it's a search engine. You can say what you want about Rap Genius, but they're just about the only lyrics site that doesn't suck. As a searcher, I want to get to sites that don't suck. In the case of lyrics, that's Rap Genius. Google has…

That's great in the short term. In the long term, having consistent and harsh punishments (whether manual or algorithmic) for SEO cheaters is very much in the interest of Google's users, because it preserves the integrity of the search results.

I don't think that punishment is necessarily effective in the long run either. If you are good at dirty SEO, you will accept your punishment on one site/business and restart with a different site/business, and hopefully last longer until getting caught this time.

With the goal of minimizing overall dirty SEO, Google shouldn't get caught up in an over-emphasis on punishment. Especially when the website being punished is actually the website that should be chosen, and they only use SEO to compete with other SEO.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#136

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:36 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #128

argonaut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the point where you start suggesting that Matt Cutts was bribed [or accepted a favor], you know you've left the land of rationality and entered into wholesale speculation. Your argument is on the face ridiculous, but just to be clear: 1) Matt Cutts is very wealthy and doesn't need any favors. 2) Matt Cutts once penalized Google's own Chome site for improper links. If there were ever any conflict of interest that e…

> At the point where you start suggesting that Matt Cutts was bribed When did I do that? I have not and am not suggesting that Matt Cutts or anyone at Google took a bribe of any kind whatsoever. I have on the other hand said that there is some uncertainty if favors may have been given/used to expedite the process of re-listing. Which if true, in itself looks really bad, simply because of the position of authority Goo…

[deleted]

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#137

Post by ojbyrne » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #123

JohnTHaller wrote: post #95

Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought backlinks to artificially inflate their pagerank. They knew they were cheating but they did it anyway. They got caught. And they were hit with a manual action on Google. Sounds good so far. But that's where it stops. RapGenius, using the connections they have fr…

You're forgetting something. As a search engine user, I don't care whether the search engine firm is "fair", whether their rules apply equally to everyone or not. It's not a country, it's a search engine. You can say what you want about Rap Genius, but they're just about the only lyrics site that doesn't suck. As a searcher, I want to get to sites that don't suck. In the case of lyrics, that's Rap Genius. Google has…

Except that google is really an ad network, and if it's seen as favoring well-connected customers over not-well connected customers, then it's going to lose favor amongst those not-well connected customers.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#138

Post by bonemachine » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:49 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #95

Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought backlinks to artificially inflate their pagerank. They knew they were cheating but they did it anyway. They got caught. And they were hit with a manual action on Google. Sounds good so far. But that's where it stops. RapGenius, using the connections they have fr…

But if they post clearly defined limits and penalties, then that brings them into the territory of offering a "terms of service" for which they can potentially be sued.

So on many levels, keeping it vague and saying simply, in so many words "just be good, don't do anything abusive" like many services do for high-volume APIs (e.g. YouTube, last I checked) -- makes for a pretty good, common-sense fit in this case.

It also puts the emphasis were it should be (in my view): not on "don't do X or Y, OR ELSE" but on "look, just be ethical, and use your head, please."

It's just too bad for RG that they didn't head Google gentle and clearly (enough) worded advice, first time around.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#139

Post by unreal37 » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:51 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #95

Honestly, this is just saddening. Google needs to have a consistent policy towards these blackhat SEO offenders and enforce it for everyone. RapGenius bought backlinks to artificially inflate their pagerank. They knew they were cheating but they did it anyway. They got caught. And they were hit with a manual action on Google. Sounds good so far. But that's where it stops. RapGenius, using the connections they have fr…

Banning Rap Genius also made Google look bad. I bet 100,000s of people search Google for "rap genius get lucky" and similar searches every day, and Google was not displaying the results they clearly wanted. In this case, the Google search result page was clearly "worse" for the ban. Google harmed itself also in this ban.

Which does not happen when they ban your herb garden equipment website.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#140

Post by bjoernbu » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:07 PM UTC

So which hit should google show for a query like "the fox lyrics"? Of course, it should be a page that contains the lyrics, but which one? The most popular one? The one shown by google will be the most popular one.

From an IR perspective, search for lyrics is somewhat strange. I don't think it's easy to say if some hit is more relevant than the other. Sure, more popular sites may offer better UX (or simply less annoying ads), but at the end of the day it's a search for facts.

I wouldn't be surprised if google will serve those lyrics themselves some day. Freebase (and hence the google knowledge graph) already contains tons and tons of information on pratically any popular song (organized in a confusion way via recordings, canonical versions and whatnot) - artist, genre, album, release dates, length of a recording, etc. I don't think adding the lyrics as well is totally out of question. After all multible KBs are user curated and users provides lyrics.

Just like they serve "fact-hits" from their knowledge graph for queries like "movies by spielberg", google should then be able to serve the lyrics directly. While this is bad for lyrics sites, imho it is convenient for users and follows the same prinicple like "movies by spielberg" or "wife tom cruise"