Comment by selmnoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by selmnoo | Hacker News Reader

Tried all of these just now:

  Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Confident Lyric
  Justin Bieber Heartbreaker Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Memphis Lyrics
  Justin Bieber One Life Lyrics
  Justin Bieber All That Matters Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Hold Tight Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Pyd Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Change Me Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Recovery Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Bad Day Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Roller Coaster Lyrics
  Justin Bieber Lyrics

All of these just yesterday were in fact ranked in the upper 5 (very often #1 actually). Rapgenius results are now not even in top 10.

Most surprisingly, even

  Justin Bieber Heartbreaker rap genius

will not show up on Google results. Wow, that was a swift and harsh response. The only surefire way to get to a RG site is by doing "*bieber site:rapgenius.com".

They were using a wide array of questionable SERP optimizing techniques (http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius among others). One described here is very interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958883. Apparently that's an old one, but it's first I'm hearing of it. From all of this, to their rape jokes and everything else in-between, you can't say they didn't have something like this coming.

Quite frankly not showing me rapgenius results when that's one of the search terms is idiotic. I guess now I have to remember to go straight to their site whenever I'm looking up lyrics. I'm glad I at least know about them and I feel bad for the people that are now going to be trapped in craplyrics.com hell.

I understand and agree with google's desire to punish spammers but their effort should not have such a major impact on users who obviously know what they are looking for.

Just wow. I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other companies. I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now.

> I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other companies.

Doubt they intended to penalize them quite this drastically. Its likely that they algorithm is just being overzealous some keywords being blacklisted. Quite similar to how the UK porn filters are filtering out Claire Perry, the most prominent campaigner for the filters[0].

> I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now

The violations are pretty serious and have been for the better part of the last (half-)decade. RapGenius should have known better. For me the worst was when the pretty much said "But everyone else is doing it".

Too bad this will obliterate them.

Unintentionally though, going forward RapGenius will be the poster child for what happens to children on the naughty list.

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the-best-...

I agree, they are clearly trying to make an example for others.

Just use Bing for now :)

Even Googling just "rap genius" doesn't get me their site in the top 10 (just their Twitter).

Now, what about actually getting quality site when I search for "Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics"? The first page now is now just full of low quality lyric sites.

Well, really, are they? I have Adblock, and really the sites I get from "Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics" are fine if I was just interested in the lyrics of that particular song.

Shouldn't "Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics" just show you all Justin Bieber lyrics?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com