Rap Genius Traffic Has Dropped By Over 80%
quantcast.com
quantcast.com
Since you can't find RapGenius by searching for it there is a decent sized audience of people who are under the assumption that RapGenius does not exist anymore. It's bizarre to the HN crowd, but very real. Check out their twitter feed:
http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...
"rap genius kendrick lamar swimming pools" would get me there quicker than any other way.
It's incredible that now that search string sends me to other pages that link to RG's lyrics but not directly to theirs.
chrome://settings/searchEngines
search engine: rapgenius.com
keyword: rg
url: http://rapgenius.com/search?q=%s
Then just type rg<tab> in the omnibox and search for whatever you want, and get taken to rg's serp.
rapgenius.com<tab>search terms
ra<tab>search terms
And there's still no damned excuse for them not being able to search maps.google.com from the omnibox.
We're switching from Chrome to Firefox at work and their site-search is incredibly clunky in comparison.
My suspicion is that the vast majority of people who search for lyrics don't care about song meanings or annotations. Azlyrics does just fine, which is why they've always been at the top. If people wanted song meanings they would search for song meanings.
My theory is that RG wasn't able to grow as fast as they hoped and have to resort to these methods. How else can RG justify a $15 million investment? Their biggest competitor, songmeanings.com, is bootstrapped with only a couple employees, which shows the true market size of the song meanings / annotations market.
Remember that most consumers want things that are insanely simple and give them immediate satisfaction. I'm not surprised that most people on HN think otherwise as they tend to be deeper thinkers than the average consumer.
I think if anything, the fact that they are funded and need to produce positive ROI for their investment creates incentive to "grow at all costs". However, the cost has been too great.
That doesn't change the size of the market.
That is, unless you think the quality or features are so good that it will increase the size of the market. In that sense, I don't think RG is groundbreaking enough IMO.
Songmeanings has been around for over a decade. If the market demand was really there ($15mm investment worth), they would naturally gotten some funding, or enough revenue, to improve their product and soak the $ potential out of the market.
Currently we are talking to a group which is very promising. Can't say much more, but hopefully we can in the near future.
That's a huge market and with RG's excellent execution so far (everyone has missteps - remember that), it warrants a $15m bet.
For example, Rdio tried to do Vdio with video and look how that turned out.
Off the top of my head, I can't even think of one company that expanded to different categories successfully. It's difficult and really rare.
I can. Here are three: Salesforce. Amazon. Google.
Not really, because they're using this kind of punishment to make an example of them in order to prevent future SEO abuse by others. It's probably for the better.
So I don't get why Google essentially fucks up with their customers.
You have the company name, not necessarily the website. It could be .com, .net and probably reasonably well a few other ones.
This is what I said when I met with Milun Tesovic from Metrolyrics, and what was more shocking is that they were licensing lyrics and paying royalties for it and that they used jQuery to block people from copying and pasting lyrics. You could be sued for copying pasting "copyrighted" text and that every other lyrics site were using "pirated" text.
You telling me consumers can't copy paste the words to "bitches aint shit but hoes and tricks " (Dr. Dre 1992, Chronic) because they are paying royalties for it out of their own pocket?
Needless to say, the traffic between azlyrics and metrolyrics reflects this. Former has been trending up for the past few years, while metrolyrics have stagnated and is less frequented than azlyrics.
In an iterated game, punishments must have a deterrent effect. They might seem disproportional, but Google's goal is not "do what's best for the world in this one instance, ignoring the long-term effects". Google's goal is "make sure nobody will try to cheat Google's algorithms, now or in the future." This is how you build the best search engine in the long run.
It would be the same if Google didn't dominate search, though they'd have to be more careful about optimally calibrating the punishment.
(N.B. This argument remains true even if other people are gaming Google right now.)
Getting people to link to you is what SEO is all about. Basically every site concerned with SEO does it in one form or another -- I thought this was what most every blog affiliate program was about!
So Google decides to "punish" RapGenius just because its program got a little bit of public notice, while 99.9% of other sites which do the same, continue doing the same thing, unpunished?
It just comes across as capricious and petty. For a site as large as Google, there should be some kind of due process involved with clear published guidelines, or (preferably) they should just work on improving their algorithm.
How is what Rap Genius is doing any different than Amazon or iTunes paying you for affiliate links, or you paying a blog to advertise you, or buying a friend a beer to include a link to you? Where exactly does the line get drawn?
Amazon and iTunes aren't paying you for the link they are paying you for the sale.
In the second and third cases it is no different if you're paying for a keyword link and if Google found out about it you would be penalized.
(You find it by searching google webmaster guidelines)
I don't know about affiliate links, but paying a blog to advertise you will also land you on Google's shitlist (unless you mark the link nofollow, in which case they don't care.)
Edit: according to http://www.webpronews.com/heres-what-googles-matt-cutts-says... you are actually supposed to nofollow affiliate links but they can usually handle it automatically for big sites like Amazon or iTunes.
When you look at the Mona Lisa or hear Sun by Koreless (IMO the most beautiful piece of music from 2013) you're processing data. It's just wave oscillations or light refraction.
=/=
If the data didn't stir some [shit], it wouldn't have been updated to the front page.
But yes, those are two possible emotive situations that this piece of data might stir.
http://news.rapgenius.com/Lemon-money-trees-rap-genius-respo...
Of course, you know, Gawker... not to be taken seriously.
Sure, it can justify its actions by saying they broke the rules, but pressing the a "death button" for a website is not a solution.
I feel as though Google needs to re-examine their core principles and determine how to better handle an issue like this. Otherwise, I suspect Google might have anti-trust and anti-competitive issues and the government might set the rules for them, and we all know how bad that would be.
And really, what value does Rap Genius add to lyrics?
What is a solution then? It seems like a good deterrent. It has to hurt.
In Poland (where I'm from) they similarly punished Ceneo, Skąpiec, Nokaut (all most popular price comparator services) and even Tesco. See http://www.seoportal.pl/ceneo-skapiec-tesco-ukarane-przez-go... (Polish) or http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre... (English by Google Translate).
Not one of these websites has died, but a lesson was taught.
I am not defending rap genius for what they did, but criticizing Google for their actions.
Users who care enough can just go directly to the site.
google's action is only consistent with what it has done in the past with others.
It's not even a contest: http://i.imgur.com/H1QixcN.png
Oh, there was also a big pop up page: http://www.azlyrics.com/eyeblaster/addineyeV2.html http://i.imgur.com/RwiGpdq.png
Which begs the question: if you don't know what 2 chainz is going on about half the time why do you listen to him?
Don't even get me started on MF Doom. Love that guy, no idea what he's talking about. http://rapgenius.com/Danger-doom-sofa-king-lyrics
Do we really want to know the true meaning behind Dr. Dre's masterpiece? Is it so important that it needs $15 million dollars? Seems to me the wheels were being reinvented and being sold as square.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html
Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks
Lick on these nuts and suck the dick
Get the fuck out after you're done
And I hope in my ride to make a quick run...Too bad you didn't use rap genius. The above line doesn't make sense. Rap genius has something different, and probably gets it right:
And I hops in my ride to make a quick run...How is this ridiculous?
I understand the facts of the situation--a rap lyrics website HAS to build around Google to achieve optimal success. But if you aren't willing to give away that much control, build a less-successful version or just find another business.
If you're a content producer, you should absolutely be looking for ways to promote other search engines (and other traffic sources) as a hedge against getting screwed by a change at $DOMINANT_PLAYER.
Google just happens to be the monopolist (and, furthermore, the cartel) in search.
That said, the landscape was already formed when they made that decision, so I imagine it was an informed one and doesn't change the meat of my comment.
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're above the rules. I RapGenius was an AWFUL lyric site there would be zero sympathy from anyone over their SEO tactics.
If you don't want to have a 6 month penalty on Google, don't cheat.
Azlyrics is the best imho, no heavy javascript, no annotations, just simple lyrics you can copy paste in to your blog or facebook.
Of course, nobody uses it.
Here, the term "Rap Genius" is being popularized by controversy.
"This site reaches over 24 million monthly people, of which 12 million (48%) are in the U.S.The typical visitor watches Nickelodeon, visits pbskids.org, and listens to National Public Radio."
This brings up an important point: hardly anyone knows how to configure or troubleshoot their computer. This is by far a more important point than some arbitrary "learn to code" movement that doesn't teach CS, and does NOT teach programming – it's like giving somebody a hammer and telling them to nail a nail into a board of wood, without teaching them how to build anything with that hammer. Instead, we should be teaching people how to maintain the furniture they already own first. I just have zero respect for Code.org at this point, it's their own agenda they're trying to fulfill. They don't care about the future of the U.S., it's just self-aggrandizement as usual.
Sorry for the OT.
There often is simply no need at all for separate user accounts on a family computer.
... or parents.
We should be teaching people how to run virus scans and backups before writing an application that prints a colored letter to the screen.
Has google disclosed other sites penalized for the same behavior?
You could get more accurate numbers by looking at at percent of search traffic to Rapgenius does not include the keyword "Rapgenius" (though you can't do that anymore since google now scrubs SERP referrers).
If you read any Kanye West lyrics on that site, they break down every line like it's some kind of literary divine intervention of pure brilliance by grasping at every straw possible.