Google's policies are counter-intuitive to how the World Wide Web was designed. You are supposed to link to other sites that you like and you want them to link to you as well. Google's policies lead to a non-linking which means that Google does all of the associating in their database to find which sites are like each other and should be grouped together, which pushes out development of new search engines because there will not be a link profile for other engines to use, thereby furthering Google's monopoly.
Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
121–130 of 167 posts
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#122Rap Genius is how I know we're in a tech bubble.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#123I really want to like rap genius but I have a few basic beefs: 1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes. 2. The "click" to translate" thing is really annoying & tough to read the full song. I feel like a side by side annotation would work better. 3. It's not as clean as other lyrics sites. Sure other ones are spammy - but they give me exactly what I'm looking for. From a conceptual side of th…
Yeah I noted in a comment how terrible the UI is. It's garbage really.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. If Google would penalize their own sites for link schemes (i.e. Chrome) done by third party agencies, certainly they should for Rap Genius. This isn't about whats the best site, this is about maintaining credibility in their index. The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine. 2. Gaming SEO is attractive to almost everybody. Google needs to make it so painful to get ca…
> The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine. If you believe this doesn't already happen, then you and I must be using different internets. Simply by being selective in which aspects of SEO gaming they chose to address, in what order, and to what extent, they are making editorial decisions. If you're working in an industry where search results are already dominated by l…
Certainly google has a right to tweak their algorithms as they choose which leads to editorial choices but to manually override a serp to place a site in a position regardless of their behavior crosses a line.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#125They make no mention of asking the unnatural link publishers to take the links down (such links can be found in Google Webmaster Tools), or of using the Disavow Links tool to tell Google they do not want anything to do with those links.
Lessons learned: Better to be safe than sorry. Know your tools. Know your partners.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, what? How do you get from "juvenile and offensive" to "hates African-American culture"? That's your own bias at play, there, bud. Loud and clear.
"Stop using slang. Get rid of that swagger. Don't brag. And wear a goddamn button-down shirt." In other words, stop acting like Jay-Z and start acting like Mark Zuckerberg.
Jay-Z wear a button-down shirt now tho
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#127This is complicated. 1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective. 2. If I was in rapgeniu…
> juvenile and occasionally offensive
I agree. I too, am occasionally perturbed when these "Silicon Valley" types show up to meeting without a suit and tie and wearing their "hipster" beards.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#128I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get significant organic Google traffic. The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance. Another problem is…
Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius.
There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem.
The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#129This is complicated. 1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective. 2. If I was in rapgeniu…
> juvenile and occasionally offensive I agree. I too, am occasionally perturbed when these "Silicon Valley" types show up to meeting without a suit and tie and wearing their "hipster" beards.
I think parent may be referring to the casual rape jokes the RG guys occasionally make.
Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
#130This is complicated. 1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective. 2. If I was in rapgeniu…
1. If Google would penalize their own sites for link schemes (i.e. Chrome) done by third party agencies, certainly they should for Rap Genius. This isn't about whats the best site, this is about maintaining credibility in their index. The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine. 2. Gaming SEO is attractive to almost everybody. Google needs to make it so painful to get ca…
Google definitely plays favorites. It is written in to how PageRank works. Some sites are Trusted manually. The distance from those sites is your Page Rank Flow.
Now that we have that settled, and you are looking for a new search engine, let me suggest http://www.plexisearch.com/
It uses a lot less Page Rank style rankings, we don't have to do much delisting since we can usually tell using NLP if a site is any good.