Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rap Genius is Back on Google

news.rapgenius.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 203 posts

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#191

Post by dreamfactory2 »

nknighthb wrote: post #188
dreamfactory2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what google provide has become societal infrastructure, particularly wrt their monopoly position. That someone else would take their place (however badly executed) is evidence of that. We use it for studying, planning journeys, shopping, finding news, converting measures etc etc. In the process it's taken a position of political and economic importance. It makes a difference to us if google suppresses or boos…

This is what I just heard you say: Regulation is needed because people might exercise free expression. Do you have any idea how evil that sounds? If that is the argument, this is my answer: I will take up arms and die fighting to prevent the realization of such a goal. Media ownership limits are justified only because of a resource scarcity. They do not apply to Internet publications, and with search engines, all I h…

That's disingenuous - I was talking about the normal limits on free expression (shouting 'fire' in the theater) and gave some concrete examples. Surely you're not suggesting it is viable for a foreign company to undermine a country's judiciary in the name of it's 'free expression'? (And let's not pretend that Google is following a social or cultural mission rather than a business one.)

Media ownership limits are about market monopolies, not scarcity, newspapers being a prime example.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#192

Post by hayksaakian »

junto wrote: post #102
walshemj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked for large ftse100 publishers who had sites penalized in algo updates its stinks that such an avowedly black hat site gets of with a slap on the wrist.

On a similar topic, how do affiliate linking programmes even work anymore? Surely Google would classify all affiliate programmes as paid links. Even big ones such as Amazon Affiliates, Commission Junction, Affiliate Window are all being plugged by affiliates, and the vast majority of those affiliates are using templated sites or stuffing keywords in blog posts that are largely irrelevant to the product or service the…

Usually they are paid be purchase, irrespective of the number of clicks.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#193

Post by nknighthb »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #191
nknighthb wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I just heard you say: Regulation is needed because people might exercise free expression. Do you have any idea how evil that sounds? If that is the argument, this is my answer: I will take up arms and die fighting to prevent the realization of such a goal. Media ownership limits are justified only because of a resource scarcity. They do not apply to Internet publications, and with search engines, all I h…

That's disingenuous - I was talking about the normal limits on free expression (shouting 'fire' in the theater) and gave some concrete examples. Surely you're not suggesting it is viable for a foreign company to undermine a country's judiciary in the name of it's 'free expression'? (And let's not pretend that Google is following a social or cultural mission rather than a business one.) Media ownership limits are abou…

Those are not "normal limits" in the United States, and I do not believe they should be "normal limits" anywhere.

If it undermines a country's judiciary for information about crimes to be published, that country's judiciary needs to be undermined. Once information has leaked beyond law enforcement officials, there is not and should not be anything anyone can do to prevent its spread.

I don't care what mission Google is on. Rights are not dependent on motive.

Newspaper ownership limits exist only in relation to broadcast station ownership. There are no separate limits on newspaper ownership.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#194

Post by dclara »

myzerox wrote: post #106

This is a relief. RG certainly gives the best search results for a lot of queries. This whole story made me fear that Google was choosing power over user experience. And that should never be the case, no matter how offending the founders of RG might appear sometimes. Don't be evil!

Is there a smell of corruption? Because it is in favor of power, connections instead of user voting, just like in favor of dictation over democracy. Isn't it?

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#195

Post by dclara »

myzerox wrote: post #106

This is a relief. RG certainly gives the best search results for a lot of queries. This whole story made me fear that Google was choosing power over user experience. And that should never be the case, no matter how offending the founders of RG might appear sometimes. Don't be evil!

Is there a smell of corruption? Because it is in favor of power, connections instead of user voting, just like in favor of dictation over democracy. Isn't it?

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#197

Post by jyothi »

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…

It is digital and everything can be traced back - almost. But it is still the world of rich and famous. A similar & more severe penalty was lifted off the most popular Indian ecommerce site - flipkart. I remember meeting their head of marketing in 2011 who had no idea of the penalty which hit the site probably 2009-10.

As a user, yes I would like this site to rank up just so RG fans are saying they like RG result in google. But it is so unfair Google sends cryptic messages on webmaster for reconsideration requests but can entertain a direct call and lift off penalty. The least Google could do is to be transparent (fairness is hard)

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#198

Post by pmarca »

pmarca wrote: post #168
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…

Do you have any evidence "VC connections" had anything to do with anything? Or are you just making shit up?

OK then, I'll just put you down for "making shit up".

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#199

Post by pstack »

holyjaw wrote: post #40
pstack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry to say, but your assessment of the site is 100% incorrect. It STARTED as a Rap Lyrics website, but it quickly expanded to be an ANY lyrics website (and they will probably expand beyond that) The main driving force behind it is that anyone can edit the lyrics, and even better, anyone can ANNOTATE the lyrics to explain what certain sections mean. Let's take for example the lyrics for Mumford & Sons' "The Cave": h…

All I know is that they somehow come up in my google results fairly often and usually unrelated to the context of my intended search and it always felt like it was SEO'd junk crapping up my results. I added them to my google filter to keep them from showing up in my searches anymore, along with all the inane commentary from their community discussion underneath each song.

Re: Rap Genius is Back on Google

#200

Post by pstack »

badman_ting wrote: post #41
pstack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

But I'm not trying to use any lyrics site. Rap Genius garbage just always popped up on my (to me)-unrelated searches. People can respond to me with how they're not spam or they're not as spammy as other lyrics sites, but the point is that they pop up in the same frequency and same context as every other link-farm/content-mining crap-fest on the internet, like ehow, cha-cha, yahoo answers, mahalo, paidcontent, and so on.
Post reply on HN