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

Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

news.rapgenius.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 167 posts

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#51

Post by onedev »

So I think there is a key takeaway for the RapGenius guys here, and it has nothing to do with Google, SEO, or their tactics.

The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (which is perceived to be negative) and that then affects people's opinions about whether they support or don't support RapGenius in this matter.

In short; quit being douchebags, it's not helping your case, your site, or your relationship with the community. All publicity is not good publicity.

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#52

Post by seiji »

justinbeaver wrote: post #38

The chart at the bottom is the most interesting part of this blog post. Rap Genius has raised $15M from a group of premier investors including Andreesen Horowitz and yet their comps (according to Rap Genius, themselves!) are a bunch of black hat, spammy link farms containing music lyrics.

Growth at all costs. Concepts of "right" or "moral" don't exist. Only money exists. They're above the rules. They have insider connections. Untouchable, yo.

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#53

Post by Throwadev »

#3: "3) Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links We don’t do this."

That is a flat out lie. Maybe it wasn't large scale, but this is exactly what they were doing by asking people to put the links back to their site to try to rank for Bieber lyrics.

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#54

Post by seiji »

davemel37 wrote: post #11

This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.) Furthermore, whil…

This site should be penalized up the wazoo.

Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#55

Post by rmrfrmrf »

gmisra wrote: post #20

This 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…

My problem is when companies think that "do everything we can for while staying just inside (and maybe a little outside) the boundaries we're given" and "do what we can for in line with our business values" are the same thing.

A company that I would support would look at the link tactic and say, "damn, that's anti-consumer, anti-business, and pretty shady all around. Let's build our site traffic by making our content better and working with Google to figure out ways to improve our site's searchability."

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#56

Post by [deleted] »

davemel37 wrote: post #11

This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.) Furthermore, whil…

[deleted]

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#57

Post by Throwadev »

onedev wrote: post #51

So I think there is a key takeaway for the RapGenius guys here, and it has nothing to do with Google, SEO, or their tactics. The lesson to be learned here is that if they continue to intentionally behave in a childish manner like they have been (in interviews, emails, etc), it puts off a lot of people; a lot of the tech community. I'm seeing a lot of comments here which seem to put a lot of weight into their image (w…

I agree that these guys are huge tools. Sad thing is the majority of their uses probably don't fall within the tech community, so their negative image within tech won't really hurt them. Most people who use their site won't ever know who the founders are. The VC's backing them don't care if they are insufferable, they just want that money. Traffic = money, if they can generate the traffic, they get funding.

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#58

Post by minimaxir »

seiji wrote: post #54
davemel37 wrote: post #11

This site should be penalized up the wazoo. This "non-apology" apology, is the classic example of a tattletale at school...the classic excuse of its not my fault cuz everyone is doing it...more importantly, it is wrong, and demonstrates a "our sh don't stick mentality" exchanging a tweet for a link is considered exchanging services for a link, which does indeed fall under the buying links category.) Furthermore, whil…

This site should be penalized up the wazoo. Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?

Since Rap Genius is a YC company, that is unlikely.

This also isn't the first time a YC company has had ethical issues called out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#59

Post by rch »

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but this all seems like the fox-post-journal-fox loop to me. They are providing commentary on a controversy created by them, about them, revolving around link traffic. It should generate some 'news' content for their site, that is also about their site. They've even managed to work in a blog post about Google's TOS and how not to violate them that some people should probably read. I'd expect it to add up to a traffic bump.

Re: Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

#60

Post by pathdependent »

This just got more interesting.

I certainly found what they did distasteful. Their non-apology makes me lose tremendous respect for a company whose product I sincerely like and frequently use. As other people mentioned, they come off as whiny children -- "but Sally did it first!"

At the same time, I recognize that they might have just pulled off something really smart. If they had came out and said, "hey, Google, you should do something about our competition, they cheat" as a blog post, it might have got some attention but most people would write it off as "yea, who doesn't use SEO." Instead, they generated a publicity storm; provoked Google; then, pointed out that, to be consistent, everybody should be punished according to the severity of the offenses. RapGenius being the least severe offender comes out on top, and they still have the best product.

I am more inclined to believe they just fucked up than they actually thought about things from this game-theoretic perspective. Misquoting Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to genius that which can be adequately be explained by luck." Moreover, I don't know how much the loss of my respect and that of people like me will cost them, but as a startup it could be expensive.

Regardless, this has been fascinating to watch.

Post reply on HN