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Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

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Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#121

Post by notastartup »

programminggeek wrote: post #17

This is not at all surprising, they did a dumb thing because they got desperate and greedy. In the words of DMX, stop being greedy: http://rapgenius.com/Dmx-stop-being-greedy-lyrics Also, as of right now they aren't showing up on google for "stop being greedy rap genius" https://www.google.com/search?q=stop+being+greedy+rap+genius

Another one of DMX's classics: X Gonna Give It To You http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jkeRpQKFDg

    Arf arf
    Yeah, yeah, yeah (Grrrr)
    Uh, Yeah don't get it twisted
    This rap shit, is mine
What if X is actually Google? Could DMX have predicted this whole ordeal? 63% drop in traffic is absolutely insane. It's not like Google is going to backtrack their decision so recovery seems impossible now when typing rap genius doesn't even show up their main site.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#122

Post by ChuckMcM »

ecaron wrote: post #7

Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.

Fundamentally it is the magnitude. Web sites often manage themselves to a metric called "RPM" or revenue per thousand. It can be thousand 'views' or for people who are interested in accuracy per thousand 'visits'. Unique IPs often translate as a good metric for 'visits'.

So if your traffic is 1.5M uniques and drops to .5 uniques, then your revenue may also have just dropped 66%. If you were staffed to be cash flow positive at your previous traffic rate, you now find yourself burning cash at an alarming rate. Your response, dictated by your reserves, is either lay off a bunch of people to curb your burn rate, or delay your accounts payable, or both. If this happens at an 'inconvienient' time, it can sour acquisitions in process, or deals with initial outlays, to be blunt it can kill you.

So then here is the thing, Google has no good way of knowing how you got to your organic ranking. There is no 'what is the rank of this place without these links' sorts of computations. So there isn't a good way to judge. But judge they must, lest others abuse their algorithm, and so they do so.

Now lets speculate that they kill off Rap Genius. Overall what does that do? Who does it help? Is it justice?

Lots of thorny ethical questions, not many good answers. And no way to make restitution. A sad place to be.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#123

Post by crazy1van »

res0nat0r wrote: post #110
belorn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A monopoly (from Greek monos μόνος (alone or single) + polein πωλεῖν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods. The verb "monopolize" refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude c…

Google is not the only supplier to internet searches and is not excluding competitors. They are merely very popular and are thus not a monopoly.

I totally don't buy that Google has a monopoly on search. Anyone here could start a search engine tomorrow. Sure, it might suck, but there is no barrier to entry. It isn't like Ma Bell telephone companies who had blocked other competitors from running copper wires to homes via tons of local ordinances... which reminds me, its pretty hard to have a true monopoly without some help from the government.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#124

Post by crazy1van »

gojomo wrote: post #80
angryasian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are not using that word correctly. If Google was the only company doing search and prevented others from entering the market you would be correct. Being the best through a superior product and innovating is not a monopoly.

Doesn't matter how you achieve a monopoly: it's defined by dominance, not bad-behavior. And once you have monopoly power, things that used to be legal for you to do – for example certain pricing or bundling strategies – can become illegal.

> Doesn't matter how you achieve a monopoly: it's defined by dominance, not bad-behavior.

Well when you describe it like that, makes me think antitrust laws are just silly. Isn't the job of a company to be the best and beat their competition?

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#125

Post by angryasian »

gojomo wrote: post #114
angryasian wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while DDG started by 1 guy and entrants like blekko or qwiki can differentiate in other ways and enter and compete easily. Again everything you are saying is because of superior product/employees and innovation. Your entire argument is based off no one else can come up with a better product so lets punish them

Where'd I say "let's punish them"? I'm just accurately labeling the situation. Google's dominant position constitutes a 'monopoly' and 'monopoly market power', in a common understanding of those words, and in the senses often used by economists and regulators. Their search market has very high 'barriers to entry', in terms of costs-to-compete, ability-to-reach-customers, returns-to-scale, and network-effects. (Separa…

>DDG, Blekko, and all search sites other than Google/Bing/Yahoo/Aol/Ask are together less than 0.3%-1% of the US market. And yet this market is wildly profitable for Google – and almost no one else.

I think this sums it up perfectly. Theres plenty of competition just no one can compete because google offers a superior product. As soon as google offers an inferior product or a competitor offers a better product people will abandon ship. They do nothing anti-competitive nor blocking entrants into the market.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#126

Post by joelrunyon »

d23 wrote: post #112
joelrunyon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about this whole controversy is that they're getting more organic links to rapgenius. When the penalty is taken care of - they may be sitting in a better position than they were previously.

I don't think organic links matter much at this point when you can't even Google their name and find them on the front page.

That's why I included "When the penalty is taken care of" in my statement.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#127

Post by joelrunyon »

ruswick wrote: post #82
ecaron wrote: post #7

Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.

Why? Because the sheer magnitude is crazy. Rap Genius's traffic fell by nearly two thirds ! This is a very prominent, YC-affiliated startup that is being nuked by Google. It should come as no surprise that the news is seen as significant by the HN crowd. Moreover, I think many people are upset with the scope of Google's punishment. De-weighting RG is one thing, nuking it into the ground is entirely different, and is…

Cutts has said before their goal is to "break the black hatters spirit" (http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-search-spa...). I assume that's what they're trying to do here.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#128

Post by chris123 »

ruswick wrote: post #82
ecaron wrote: post #7

Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.

Why? Because the sheer magnitude is crazy. Rap Genius's traffic fell by nearly two thirds ! This is a very prominent, YC-affiliated startup that is being nuked by Google. It should come as no surprise that the news is seen as significant by the HN crowd. Moreover, I think many people are upset with the scope of Google's punishment. De-weighting RG is one thing, nuking it into the ground is entirely different, and is…

The response was designed to send a message. And it seems to have accomplished that.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#130

Post by mvkel »

The more interesting point is how this illustrates how many businesses are almost completely reliant on Google to make their business viable.

We hear all the time that it's not good business practice to rely on someone else's service to drive one's business (building a Facebook app as a business, etc.), but how many of us include Google search results in the mix?

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