I'm sorry, do we really think that Christmas is an accurate sample day? L2Math.
Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
41–50 of 130 posts
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that it's because they are not fans of their brogrammer antics. Read this thread for example (or any other Rap Genius thread on HN) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904224 The original link that was deleted was this http://aphyr.com/media/recruiters/rapgenius.txt
What did I just read? I don't understand that exchange at all. So Rap Genius sent a corny email to this guy trying to hire him. And...?
...and he said "no thanks" because he does not approve of RG's past behavior. They persisted. And then he said no again in verse form. That's pretty much the whole story.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#43Can 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.
In one of the other threads, some stated that Google do not have monopoly status. The claim they used was that google only has 25% of the search market.
This topic is interesting because it shows how much in a monopoly status google really is in in controlling where traffic goes on the net.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#44Its example where trick of growth hacking went wrong!
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think folks are interested to see how much the penalty hurts.
I personally know of a number of legitimate sites that were invariably affected due to content and blog farms harvesting their content when Google's panda algorithm rolled out. Those penalties hurt a lot of good people! Anyways, this one is a bit more complex than how much the penalty hurts, rather it's because, a well known and well funded start-up adopted shoddy traffic building practices that were unacceptable yea…
What's a legitimate site? Plenty of sites most people would call "legitimate" like high profile blogs or ecommerce sites engage in activity that's frowned upon by Google. The fact that some unwanted behaviour was no longer rewarded isn't exactly a penalty.
What RapGenius (also a legitimate site in the sense that they're not scammers and providing an useful service) did wasn't just unwanted behaviour but specifically forbidden. And yes, they're far from alone in what they did. Which is exactly why Google is making an example out of them.
I know, it sucks, all your competitors doing similar things forces you to choose between taking this risk and never making it in the first place. But that's exactly why it's a good thing Google is making a stand and setting an example.
It's a move towards a level playing field where nobody is making the internet a worse place by engaging in tricks like link farming rather than a level playing field where everyone is doing it and the end user suffers the consequences.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think folks are interested to see how much the penalty hurts.
I personally know of a number of legitimate sites that were invariably affected due to content and blog farms harvesting their content when Google's panda algorithm rolled out. Those penalties hurt a lot of good people! Anyways, this one is a bit more complex than how much the penalty hurts, rather it's because, a well known and well funded start-up adopted shoddy traffic building practices that were unacceptable yea…
Same here. I am in no way affiliated with Fluther other than being a user and Panda completely screwed them. I think they got screwed because Mahalo scraped their RSS feed to steal their content while providing links to the original content. So there was a thousand links going to Fluther from a shithole of a site.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#47This is the best PR stunt ever.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#48As a total aside, how do sites like Quantcast and Alexa get traffic information from other websites that they don't have code on? (or do they?) I feel like getting accurate traffic statistics on one's own website is tough enough.
Many of them just make it up:
http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our-...
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#49Can 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.
Part of it might be Schadenfreude since HN does not seem to think much of RG.
I think this is exactly it.
Their affect is another example of cultural appropriation of "urban" culture by three very affluent guys (Stanford & Yale grads), which I think turns a lot of people off, including myself. As someone who genuinely grew up in that culture, it is painfully cringe worthy and just sad to see people who have no background in it adopt it. Their Disrupt interview was a genuine display of the generally awkward douchebaggery that comes from that appropriation.
So when I see folks like this do poorly because of arrogance, it is indeed schadenfreude.
Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics
#50Why is Rap Genius afforded this coverage? There are a lot of SEO scammers out there and are punished as found. Reading through one of those TC articles it appears that they were interviewed on stage by TC during one of their events too. Why is a scammy link baity company given this importance?
Three reasons: 1) The site itself isn't actually half bad, especially when compared to other lyrics sites. 2) They're a YC company, and took money from other big investors. This automatically makes them high-profile on places like HN. 3) The founders often publically act like douchebags, write emails with bad spelling, and generally seem to think that being cool is the most important part of running a startup. I susp…
#3 definitely is why there is so much enthusiasm running around regarding their punishment