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<i></i> 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, while links in twitter might not pass link juice they most certainly influence search rankings, whether its personalized search, or actual algorithms that take into consideration social signals.<p>The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant?<p>You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?
This is complicated.<p>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.<p>2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play.<p>3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions.<p>As they say, the game is the game.
I 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.<p>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.<p>Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too.<p>I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people.<p>Google, your system is totally broken.
No. This is a lie. Let's compare their original email [0] to their apology. While we're at it, let's look at their logical fallacies.<p><pre><code> For example, compare Rap Genius’ (RG's) annotated edition of Justin Bieber's new hit single "Heartbreaker" – which dozens of Bieber fans have annotated with details of his break up with Selena Gomez – to AZLyrics’ version of the same
</code></pre>
This is a false clause [1]. Nobody is doubting RG's content is superior. If anything, better content would be a reason <i>not</i> to engage in blackhat SEO.<p><pre><code> Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
We don’t do this.
That is, links shared on Twitter may give temporary traffic to fan sites, but not long-term link juice.
</code></pre>
Yet, in your email to bloggers, you promised to<p><pre><code> get you MASSIVE traffic
</code></pre>
Well which one is it, temporary traffic or massive traffic? This is a direct contradiction.<p><pre><code> With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:
</code></pre>
Again, lyrics sites or shady. They also don't raise VC money from Andreessen Horowitz. You'll be held to a higher standard, and rightfully so, if you're truly hoping to become more than a lyrics site. This is bandwagon fallacy [2].<p>[0]- <a href="http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed" rel="nofollow">http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed</a><p>[1]- <a href="https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause" rel="nofollow">https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause</a><p>[2]- <a href="https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon" rel="nofollow">https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon</a>
Well played. The Bieber song linked in the first paragraph is the one they wanted pushed in the first place to get their page rank up.<p>Looks like an apology but is a huge SEO push.
<p><pre><code> RapGenius != Lyrics site
Lyrics site != text annotation site
Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO != apology
</code></pre>
If an internet user searches for "Coldplay Yellow lyrics" he/she should be provided with a lyrics website (e.g. AZLyrics) by the search engine. If I search for "Coldplay Yellow annotations" I would like to go to an annotations website like RapGenius. That's what I expect from Google.<p>If RapGenius wants to grow on the back of a the lyrics searches with dodgy SEO tactics, and wants to <i>win</i> both on the lyrics and annotations <i>SERP</i> they will not be providing users with what they want.
I <i>really</i> want to like rap genius but I have a few basic beefs:<p>1. It's hard to read. Yellow or even white on black kills my eyes.<p>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.<p>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.<p>From a conceptual side of things - I really like what Rap Genius is trying to do. However, the little things like the ones I mentioned above make me looking for other alternatives.
This just got more interesting.<p>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!"<p>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.<p>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.<p>Regardless, this has been fascinating to watch.
These are just paid links. It falls under the category "exchanging goods or services for links". The "service" is a tweet or post on facebook.<p>You can report them to Google here:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks</a>
> is to find blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy and ask them to link pages on Rap Genius that are relevant to their posts.<p>So, this is just a lie, right? The original thing on HN [<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658</a>] makes it pretty clear that they were asking for random links to Justin Bieber songs on any old blog post regardless of relevance. Or is Justin Bieber relevant to jmarbach's blog for some reason I'm missing? Also that they were hardly being selective about 'blogs whose content we think our followers will enjoy'.<p>So they're just plain lying, right?<p>[I _almost_ made a rap genius account for the purpose of annotating their statement to point this out. I might still do it, but the idea that they might find it gratifying that I created an account puts me off.]
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.<p>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.<p>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.
"With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors:"<p>I thought snitching wasn't cool in the hip hop community?
These guys knew exactly what they were doing. Nice fake pr apology trying to trick your users into thinking you are clean. Example of anyone can get addicted to bad tactics and $ coming in. But you need to remember to not get a lot of PR and do grey tactics at the same time.
This is a pretty half-hearted apology. All that has been proven here is that they knew exactly what they were doing the whole time. Additionally, I think they are doing themselves a disservice by comparing themselves to websites like AZLyrics, Metrolyrics etc, because those sites are not even in the same league as RapGenius in terms of quality of content, and it does not serve to justify their actions anyway.<p>Disclaimer: I use RapGenius every day and will continue to do so, unless they continue down this Metrolyrics-esque road.
As someone who has a client of mine who's been wrongly affected by Google's search update recently (because of inadvertent toxic backlinks), I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
This seems like a good SEO method - point out that you were doing something extremely minor in violation of Google's guidelines, then point out that everyone else breaks most of the guidelines. All the same time do this in a niche that is known for spam, all the while hoping that Google will read it and manually slap everyone else, giving you a better overall ranking.
#3: "3) Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
We don’t do this."<p>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.
I guess they wont be launching SEOgenius.com anytime soon. All jokes aside, these kinds of actions are the result of pressure to get big fast. You can complain about what these competitor lyric sites are doing, but the truth is that some of these guys are the true growth hackers. They actually employ 1-2 elements that are 100% white-hat and I am positive it helps them achieve great rankings... aside for being around longer. It's not obvious but they have implemented some smart SEO strategies. But here's the thing... They learned these strategies by understanding how random users use their service. Nothing wrong with this. Perhaps, rapgenius should look a little closer and interact with competitor sites if they are frustrated with the competition.
The chart at the bottom is the most interesting part of this blog post.<p>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.
It's the same as when SourceForge started doing drive-by installs, and the cure is the same:<p>Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Can someone actually explain or try to convince me why paid links are bad? What about non-paid SEO links? I am not familiar with the arguments.<p>Say I am running a blog and I am asking my friends to include my blog link in everyone one of his links regardless what. And we are just doing this to get each other noticed. Say he's writing a C++ tutorial and I will also cook up a Python equivalent and say "hey guys if you want to check out the Python one, go check out my friend's blog here."<p>It's almost like me asking someone to promote my Youtube Channel (hey guys please subscribe X's new channel) in the video and in description.
While I am a fan of the RapGenius product, can all the superfluous crap just go away?<p>If I was investing in RG or advising them, I'd tell them to put a muzzle on it. They have a good product, stop screwing it up.
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.
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 <i>should</i> probably read. I'd expect it to add up to a traffic bump.
While they are fixing the bad SEO they should fix the spam too :)<p>e.g. <a href="http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji/09166007251-91-9166007251-marriage-specialist-bengali-baba-ji" rel="nofollow">http://rapgenius.com/albums/09166007251-91-9166007251-marria...</a>
I actually think there site sucks. Like really bad. The idea is great, but frankly I could develop a better UI in less than a month. I'm not saying this to tout myself, I'm saying this because the UI is that bad. Seriously, it looks like something I would have created in my first 2 years of programming.
The chart at the end needs a key, I have no idea what I am looking at. Should be on <a href="http://wtfviz.net/" rel="nofollow">http://wtfviz.net/</a>
". We believe that any unbiased user would prefer the Rap Genius version over the alternatives "<p>I'm actually unbiased and prefer the alternative. When I'm looking for lyrics I just want lyrics and couldn't care less about the annotation. I'm not saying I'm the norm but saying the "norm" would always go for RapGenius is not fair, at least in my case.
They 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.<p>Lessons learned: Better to be safe than sorry. Know your tools. Know your partners.
I just published a short post with some data <a href="http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius" rel="nofollow">http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius</a>
Well, unlike every other communiqué of theirs, this doesn't at all sound like it was penned by J-Roc of "Trailer Park Boys."<p>They must've been hacked.