Google Obliterates Buzzy Startup Rap Genius For Trying To Game The System
Rap Genius, the startup with $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, has been clobbered by Google.
Rap Genius was caught trying to game Google to get higher search rankings.
Google's search results are based on a lot of different factors, but at the most basic level, Google measures how many other sites are linking to your site to determine where you should be in search rankings.
So, Rap Genius was asking people to add links to Rap Genius pages on their sites. It's a fairly crude, somewhat scuzzy practice. And Rap Genius got caught doing it.
Google really hates when people try to game Google. So, Google has severely punished Rap Genius.
If you try to search for "Rap Genius" you won't get the website. You'll get its Twitter page, its Wikipedia entry, its Facebook page, but you won't get a direct link to the website. Searching for lyrics no longer brings Rap Genius pages.
Rap Genius and Google are reportedly working on a solution to fix the problem. We've emailed the company for comment.
Rap Genius is a site that provides translations of rap lyrics. If you're trying to figure out what the heck Kanye West is talking about in Bound 2, for instance, Rap Genius will explain it.
The plan for the company is to expand beyond song lyrics to provide an explanation of everything.
The idea has people excited, but the founders of the company make some people nervous. They're kids from Yale, but act like they're rappers. They talk trash, dress unusually, and do goofy stuff like, well, like this.
After getting caught trying to game Google, Rap Genius apologized, but at the same time, tried to deflect blame by saying others do the same:
"We effed up, other lyrics sites are almost definitely doing worse stuff, and we'll stop. We'd love for Google to take a closer look at the whole lyrics search landscape and see whether it can make changes that would improve lyric search results."
Incredibly, this apology may be the reason that Google all but wiped out Rap Genius from its search results.
Danny Sullivan, who understands the mechanics of Google's search results better than anyone that doesn't work at Google, said:
"We don't know exactly why Rap Genius is in trouble because Google won't say (yes, we asked, and we got a no comment on the matter for now). We know it's in trouble because it's no longer ranking, but ironically, this might be because since Rap Genius has declared itself in violation of Google's guidelines, Google acted to penalize it based on that, even if Rap Genius might have been fine.
The point is - understanding what's a good link with Google is incredibly hard these days. Google tells you links are important to rank; Google also tells you an increasing number of rules about which links "count" or how links might hurt you or even how you may need to "disavow" links."
And Sullivan adds one more point, which is huge for investors in Rap Genius. He says that Google might eventually just nuke Rap Genius altogether by providing its own lyric pages:
Finally, it's probably an incredibly dumb business model to be doing a lyrics site that hopes for Google traffic in a time when Google, like Bing, is moving toward providing direct answers. Lyrics, to my understanding, often have to be licensed. That makes them a candidate for Google to license directly and provide as direct answers.
Read Sullivan's full analysis here >