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Rap Genius Returns To Google Search Rankings
theodp writes "After being punished by Google for manipulative SEO tactics, a contrite Rap Genius says it's back in Google's good graces. 'It takes a few days for things to return to normal, but we're officially back!' reads a post by the Rap Genius founders. 'First of all, we owe a big thanks to Google for being fair and transparent and allowing us back onto their results pages. We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked.' Rap Genius credits some clever trackback scraping programming for its quick redemption, but a skeptic might suggest it probably didn't hurt that Rap Genius' biggest investor, Andreessen Horowitz, is tight with Google."
Q: Rap Genius?
A: Oxymoron
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
who?
There's apparently a website called "Rap Genius" and it's apparently popular among those who aren't geniuses. Hence, the rap part.
Delete this stupid article and smack whoever posted it. what a load of useless shit.
But it turns out that very few other websites want to give you a "free link".
Want to know why? BECAUSE YOUR SITE FUCKING SUCKS!
I'm up for joining your startup to build a better search engine. You obviously have some clever ideas on how to do it.
Unfortunately, it's the boundaries of how un-newsworthy content can be and still be called "news".
Someone I've never heard of does dodgy SEO, gets banned by Google, then gets the ban lifted (+- unproven allegation of favouritism) and I'm supposed to give a shit?
Happens every day, almost entirely to other people I've never heard of either.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
I've been in the computing industry since the 1970s. I've seen trends come, and I've seen trends go. I've seen people come, I've seen people go. I've seen companies come, I've seen companies go. I've seen technologies come, I've seen technologies go.
But over these several decades of experience, the worst, and I mean the very worst, people I've ever had to deal with are the hipsters that have weaseled their way in since 2008 or so. They've advocated for some of the worst technologies we've ever seen (JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, NoSQL), while engaging in some of the ugliest business and social practices (collecting and selling huge amounts of private information, "lifestyle businesses", scummy SEO tactics).
They aren't contained just to industry, either. They've got their rotten tentacles into open source projects, too. They've almost single-handedly destroyed GNOME 3 at this point. Firefox is not far behind. And their obsession with git (and GitHub) has basically destroyed the practice of proper releases, especially of libraries.
We need to shun these people. Anyone hiring in industry should avoid them at all costs. Anyone working on open source projects should refuse to let them contribute. While open source projects are often in desperate need of help, this is surely not the kind of help that is needed. We don't need hipsters involved with software development of any type.
they wouldn't have banned him in the first place. they would have contacted em and then made them resolve it.
> google searches are near worthless
You clearly aren't a developer who needs quick answers to edge-case problems which have affected a hangful of other people (including your client), or someone stalking their...uh...forget that - go with the programmer thingy.
agreed. In my job I use google all day long to troubleshoot and whatI need is usually within the top 3 results. Granted my searches are usually for a specific error code
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I didn't RTFA I didn't even finish reading the whole summary. This is stupid advertizing. This makes me feel like looking for other news outlets...
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
For one thing, static typing is like having unit tests that your compiler automatically writes for you. It automatically catches certain classes of program defects before your program even starts running. For another, sometimes you do have to count bits when you're trying to squeeze 10,000 concurrent HTTP or HTTPS connections on one server.
He was modded redundant because it's bullshit. In the same breath, he complains about useless results due to spam as well as Google's attempt to stop people making the results useless due to spam. And apparently Google's algorithms are "broken" because they "created" a problem, namely SEO manipulation. But then he goes on to explain that AltaVista was subject to SEO manipulation as well. And he's condemning Google for attempting to fix it, while blaming them for being unable to! After using this silly logic to come to some (wrong, but still) weak conclusions, he goes on to make broad proclamations about the demise of Google, while complaining about lawsuits (like what?) and "arbitrary rules" (like these? Seems like they're pretty reasonable, and Rap Genius admitted to violating them). Easily the most worthless comment I've read on Slashdot in months, at least above score 0, and that's saying something.
It gets even better when the website in question has said (from the fine summary!): "First of all, we owe a big thanks to Google for being fair and transparent and allowing us back onto their results pages. We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked". But apparently this is Google being abusive and throwing a temper tantrum (which he says twice). Someone should tell Rap Genius, because they don't seem to think so.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I'm grumbling myself, having been around (and yes, trolling as AC sometimes) since pre-2000 myself. I changed users because I rather use a handle than my initials these days.
Beta.slashdot.org is awful.
Slashdot is bad, but what is out there is worse:
Reddit just has people cooing about BitCoin and any sentiment to the contrary will get feedback similar to posting to /b/ saying how you can't stand anonymous users and this should be illegal.
Digg is just plain fail. Too many people with lots of accounts that will bury you with their bots the second you say something out of the PC line.
So far, the sanest discussion I see outside of private mailing lists or heavily moderated forums tends to be /., but the articles seem mainly to be about how cool BitCoin is, How cool the triad of treason Manning/Assange/Snowden is, another "revelation" about the NSA, or some article cooing about the latest Apple toy and how Apple can never fail or make a dud product.
"whatI need is usually within the top 3 results. Granted my searches are usually for a specific error code"
I agree. The problem with many, many result pages are the users queries. Properly formed queries provide useful results.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"Rap Genius" is a misleading and silly name for what, transcription software like DragonWriter? Actually, it might not even be that good (all I read about lately are Internet piecework/ sweatshops that are supposedly "social" and "democratizing"...except they aren't).
I know that Mark Andreessen funded it, but he isn't right about everything.
tempus fugit