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Rap Genius is Back on Google

news.rapgenius.com

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Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#151

Post by blumkvist »

aaronwall wrote: post #131
unbeli wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: h…

A very well known and funded business gets preferential treatment. BOO-HOO. Do you think Bill Gates waits on a line at the bank? At the mayor's office? Anywhere at all? In real life if you are powerful, you get respect.

There is no such thing as fairness. It's a paradigm of the feeble minded. Most likely a defense mechanism - "look guys, he cheated on the exam, let's tell the teacher!".

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#152

Post by majormajor »

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…

I search for "[song name] lyrics" and I get a site that has the lyrics. I've never thought it sucked. I don't care how many banners on the side, just that the words are there. And I prefer an "expanded" view with all the [Hook] type stuff replaced with the actual words, rather than the "more correct" RG presentation.

Heck, sometimes I have to click more to get what I'm looking for with RG. After trying a few things, I was able to reproduce this just now with a search for "forgot about dre lyrics" (no quotes). This is the second result I got: something google shows as "rapgenius.com/...dre-forgot-about-dre/Eazy-es-ice-cubes-and-docs-the-s..." that does a redirect to http://rapgenius.com/Dr-dre-forgot-about-dre-lyrics#note-252... which pops up an annotation over the lyrics. That's not what I was looking for.

All that to say: it's not clear to me that RG really sucks less for "[song name] lyrics" queries.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#153

Post by blumkvist »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #46
grimlck wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have a like, sir!

Fairness does not exist in real life. Screaming "unfair" will not help you achieve anything. It's such a ridiculous situation for me. All these guys are sitting on the line, raging at real life because popular culture brain washed them.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but

What a bunch of stupid nerds!

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#154

Post by diydsp »

kenjackson wrote: post #60
tszming wrote: post #36

People should worry why Google has so much power nowadays, rather than why they unban Rap Genius so fast.

This really is the thing that struck me. All this talk about companies being destroyed and jobs lost and hardly a mention of worry about the power Google yields. We need more competition in this space. Sites need a search engine with real market share to compete against Google.

yup. just adding duck duck go to this laptop now. thanks for the reminder.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-ss...

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#155

Post by diydsp »

kenjackson wrote: post #60
tszming wrote: post #36

People should worry why Google has so much power nowadays, rather than why they unban Rap Genius so fast.

This really is the thing that struck me. All this talk about companies being destroyed and jobs lost and hardly a mention of worry about the power Google yields. We need more competition in this space. Sites need a search engine with real market share to compete against Google.

yup. just adding duck duck go to this laptop now. thanks for the reminder.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-ss...

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#156

Post by MitziMoto »

friscobob wrote: post #77

God this pisses me off to no end. So my site is targeted by negative SEO. (Yeah, I know, I know, negative SEO doesn't exist. Fuck off.) So who do I call? I've been penalized for months and there is nothing I can do about it. Nobody can help. But these fuckers are able to make a call and recover from a SELF INFLICTED wound in less than a week. I am being targeted by crap that is COMPLETELY OUT OF MY CONTROL and it's t…

This scares the crap out of me. There are some really shady people in my industry and I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about launching a negative SEO campaign against me. I wish Google and Matt Cutts would address this for real.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#157

Post by argonaut »

bushido wrote: post #149
argonaut wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Favor[0] == Help Or quite literally if I go by a dictionary: an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual. Example: "I've come to ask you a favor". Synonyms: service, good turn, good deed, kindness, act of kindness, courtesy. To further elaborate to address your failure to understand a semantic line of argument: 1) The terms Favor and Bribery are not interchangeable. 2) I have only used the word favor. 3) I have in…

You missed my point again. The semantic line of argument is pointless. Favor and bribery are interchangeable because my argument holds for either case.

Your insinuation is still baseless.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#158

Post by nknighthb »

dreamfactory wrote: post #145
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…

As a user I care whether Google finds me the most relevant results from the biggest haystack or whether it editorialises those results - it's a big distinction. By that measure I'd say they definitely _shouldn't_ be penalising sites for finding loopholes in their algorithms but should simply close those holes up.

Whether a search engine presents "the most relevant results" is a subjective determination that can only be made with certainty on a per-user basis.

I'm confident in this assertion because people have, at various times, claimed that other search engines provide them more relevant results, yet for me, those search engines almost always failed to even match Google, and never exceeded it.

This was also the case pre-Google -- e.g. lots of people swore by AltaVista, but I almost never used it, because it never seemed to work well for me. I actually remained primarily a WebCrawler user for quite a while, right up until settling into Google in the 1999~2000 timeframe.

I don't want to be limited to search engines that provide what some bureaucrat has decided are the most relevant and/or neutral results. I want to be able to choose the search engine that provides the most relevant results for me, and I have seen no evidence that what's relevant for one person is necessarily relevant for everyone else.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#159

Post by argonaut »

benologist wrote: post #150
argonaut wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing people bandying about this "VC connection" baseless innuendo. How is that anything but baseless, cynical speculation? Remember, we're talking about someone (Matt Cutts) who penalized Google's own Chome website for improper links. If there was ever a conflict of interest, that would be it. The idea that Matt was doing RG a special favor through a16z or other investors is an extraordinary claim, and we'r…

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ Also, I have invested in Perfect Third (the company that makes the WakeMate), Zencoder, Cardpool, Tasty Labs, Drchrono, Grubwithus, PoundPay, Apportable, Mailgun, and Parse. I have also invested in CircuitHub, PlanGrid, Pixelapse, ZenPayroll, Trigger.io, Zenefits, and True Link Financial. I have also invested in Lowercase Capital (Lowercase Ventures Fund I), Y Combinator (Y C…

X is an investor, therefore X must be directly persuaded by Y investor?

That's not any evidence that RG specifically had a direct line to Cutts, and that this actually influenced the outcome. Again, we're talking about someone who penalized Chrome. I don't know of any greater conflict of interest than your employer.

In an argument about someone's motivations, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in the context of their past behavior.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#160

Post by benologist »

argonaut wrote: post #159
benologist wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/ Also, I have invested in Perfect Third (the company that makes the WakeMate), Zencoder, Cardpool, Tasty Labs, Drchrono, Grubwithus, PoundPay, Apportable, Mailgun, and Parse. I have also invested in CircuitHub, PlanGrid, Pixelapse, ZenPayroll, Trigger.io, Zenefits, and True Link Financial. I have also invested in Lowercase Capital (Lowercase Ventures Fund I), Y Combinator (Y C…

X is an investor, therefore X must be directly persuaded by Y investor? That's not any evidence that RG specifically had a direct line to Cutts, and that this actually influenced the outcome. Again, we're talking about someone who penalized Chrome . I don't know of any greater conflict of interest than your employer. In an argument about someone's motivations, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in th…

I'm inclined to believe that savvy investors would leverage their own investors and network to solve problems when they can. Especially when X is an investor in Y.

The incredibly fast timeline is pretty clear evidence of communication considering the standard response time is never and the standard unpunishing time is never and the standard result is basically "change your domain".

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