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Comment by bushido | Hacker News Reader

This is great for Rap Genius.

But this truly saddens me as well. I cannot for the life of me understand how they were able to fix ten-of-thousands of backlinks and other shady practices and get back in the good graces of Google so darn quickly.

Frankly I do not know a single other legitimate(+with good traffic) site who was able to get back in the good graces of Google after algorithm updates without spending many many months researching any possible reasons to be penalized and fixing it themselves after repeatedly asking google for help to no avail.

Could it be that Rap Genius was special because it has Andreessen Horowitz?

Sure seems that way.

I am not going to stop using Google, but I am inclined to use them lesser now.

I would like to hear why, how rap genius was fixed this and what this means for other people who get penalized from Matt Cutts though!!

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They're back on Google, but keep in mind that they're seemingly not in a great position. Googling "justin beiber lyrics" doesn't show Rapgenius. Neither does "lady gaga lyrics" or "tupac lyrics". In all three cases, azlyrics.com has the top spot.

Edit: the reply is to the now reacted comment:

   > They're a startup, and this was a problem which was either going to kill them or be surmounted quickly. Naturally, they surmounted it quickly.

   Google laid out a clear plan of action for them. Is it hard to believe they finished it quickly?

Yeah, most of the other sites I refer to were also start-ups by almost any definition.

They did not quite finish their action plan. They got away on reasonable doubt.

This is the first time I am seeing this defense considered by Google.

I willing to bet any other non-vc funded bootstrapped start-up would never be afforded this consideration by Google.

This rant is not a judgement on Rap Genius, I am actually glad they maneuvered around this.

I am judging Google.

They have killed other start-ups for reasons such as other sites farming and duplication their content more vehemently. Reasonable doubt has never been considered for anybody else and most likely will never be hence forth.

I just want to add that this attitude doesn't even reflect poorly solely on Google Search. Adsense is another product that if you get kicked out of, you have zero recourse.

What about that gmail fiasco a few months ago? Users got blocked out of G services for not providing their real names and had no recourse to get their data for several weeks/months.

Just goes to show that in several cases it's not what you know but who you know.

I have never seen Rap Genius on Google, even before all of this. I've seen Metro Lyrics, AZ Lyrics, Song Meaning, etc. I've gone through pages of Google results because every lyrics site sucks, still haven't seen them. Everyone says Rap Genius is excellent, but I've never heard of them outside of HN. I find that odd.

You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special.

In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed. Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there, especially since Rap Genius was cooperative, technically competent, and aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius? It's just a bunch of stupid rap lyrics. So what? In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway?

I run across Rap Genius now and then and have always considered it to be spam, just like yahoo answers, ehow, and mahalo pages.

Sorry to say, but your assessment of the site is 100% incorrect. It STARTED as a Rap Lyrics website, but it quickly expanded to be an ANY lyrics website (and they will probably expand beyond that)

The main driving force behind it is that anyone can edit the lyrics, and even better, anyone can ANNOTATE the lyrics to explain what certain sections mean.

Let's take for example the lyrics for Mumford & Sons' "The Cave": http://rock.rapgenius.com/Mumford-and-sons-the-cave-lyrics

I looked up this song one day trying to understand more of the allusions made in the song; I know the title itself alludes to Plato's 'The Cave' and wanted to delve deeper. Because of this site, I can see that Verse 3:

> So come out of your cave walking on your hands

> And see the world hanging upside down

> You can understand dependence

> When you know the maker's hand

is an allusion to St. Francis.

Most of the time when Rap Genius ISN'T the top result for lyrics when I google, I facepalm and go directly to their site.

I should emphasize here that this overly positive post isn't intended to condone their shady, spammy blackhat SEO tactics, but damnit if they aren't the BEST lyrics site by a fair margin.

> even better, anyone can ANNOTATE the lyrics to explain what certain sections mean.

Maybe I looked at the wrong lyrics, but I saw precious few explanations, instead most lines had jokes and/or totally unrelated pictures attached to them. Often enough the jokes is to simply restate what was said in rapper slang in plain english, which is funny for exactly the first time you read it, then it's just spam.

All I know is that they somehow come up in my google results fairly often and usually unrelated to the context of my intended search and it always felt like it was SEO'd junk crapping up my results. I added them to my google filter to keep them from showing up in my searches anymore, along with all the inane commentary from their community discussion underneath each song.

In fact, how are they not being sued for copyright by the owners of all the lyrics they're posting, anyway?

They have had some legal troubles, but are trying to sign licensing deals http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/media/rap-genius-...

However, if their licensing deals are anything like what other sites have to pay for lyrics, it's going to significantly (entirely?) cut into their profit margin.

If you think Rap Genius is stupid try using any other lyrics site. That's what is so special about it.

Is anyone else getting more and more suspicious of the scorn that people have been gratuitously heaping on RG? Like, did they run over everyone's dog?

I actually avoid using them because the design is hard on the eyes and I find the way they present annotations to be annoying. I don't think there's anything special about them at all, especially when you consider that the idea is completely unoriginal.

But I'm not trying to use any lyrics site. Rap Genius garbage just always popped up on my (to me)-unrelated searches. People can respond to me with how they're not spam or they're not as spammy as other lyrics sites, but the point is that they pop up in the same frequency and same context as every other link-farm/content-mining crap-fest on the internet, like ehow, cha-cha, yahoo answers, mahalo, paidcontent, and so on.

Can someone clarify for me, again, what is so special about Rap Genius?

Why? You've no doubt read 10x reasons people here have said so (in the other threads). Do you just want to argue? If you don't agree, fine, but clearly a large and vocal group does. So what? Move along - find other things to care about.

http://news.rapgenius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-hor...

    Rap Genius [...] and have always considered it to be spam

That's pretty absurd...

> Google has some incentive to be more active in fixing the problem there

That's exactly how I feel too. Though the incentive for google is very unclear, the lack of clarity is explored further below.

> You have the causality wrong. Rap Genius has Andreessen Horowitz because Rap Genius is special.

Not saying Rap Genius is not a special lyrics start-up. Not even saying that it would not have been a good candidate for any VC financing them.

Though, Definitely saying that the special case leniency shown by Google sure make it seem like having Andreessen Horowitz is the only thing different between Rap Genius and scores of sites before with this and similar situations.

> In this case, the user experience for a Google user is worse when Rap Genius is removed.

And its not when other good sources are removed because they were link bombed or their content was scraped more than their competitors?

> Rap Genius was cooperative

Find me one person in their situation who would not be. It was to either co-operate or die.

> Rap Genius was technically competent

How?

> Aside from their "rapper swag persona", genuinely nice guys.

I am judging Google.

I have nothing against Rap Genius founders, nor their "rapper swag persona" and I'll believe you when you say the are nice guys.

Having worked for large ftse100 publishers who had sites penalized in algo updates its stinks that such an avowedly black hat site gets of with a slap on the wrist.

On a similar topic, how do affiliate linking programmes even work anymore? Surely Google would classify all affiliate programmes as paid links. Even big ones such as Amazon Affiliates, Commission Junction, Affiliate Window are all being plugged by affiliates, and the vast majority of those affiliates are using templated sites or stuffing keywords in blog posts that are largely irrelevant to the product or service they are plugging for affiliate fees?

Aren't all affiliate programmes technically bad for the publisher after Penguin?

Usually they are paid be purchase, irrespective of the number of clicks.

This wasn't an algorithm update.

If the folks at Google can figure out how to detect this sort of gaming more reliably, that may end up in a future algorithm update, and no amount of pleading will matter for anyone affected by it - they'll have to fix the problem or continue to suffer the consequences.

The algo is meant to detect such manipulative links and devalue them.

> Frankly I do not know a single other legitimate(+with good traffic) site who was able to get back in the good graces of Google after algorithm updates without spending many many months researching any possible reasons to be penalized and fixing it themselves after repeatedly asking google for help to no avail.

Well there wasn't an algorithm update, there was a manual action. Google reversed the manual action after RapGenius stopped breaking the rules and cleaned up its mess. If this happened to you there would be a note about it in Webmaster Tools and you would be able to ask Google to take another look. I'm sure RapGenius had all hands on deck making sure they were up to snuff.

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