Google, Censorship, and Salesmanship: The Epic Smackdown of RapGenius
Why no one messes with Big G, and why maybe they should
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The startup RapGenius began in 2009 as a website for rap lyrics. By late 2013, it was already well-known in the tech set because its founders have done many ridiculous things — such as telling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to suck dick and then saying they’ll be bigger than Facebook.
But for RapGenius, great ridiculousness comes with great savviness. The Yale-educated founders earned a heritage with top startup accelerator Y-Combinator, plus $15 million from top venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz. They seemed untouchable.
Then, just in time for Christmas 2013, RapGenius got caught flagrantly violating Google’s rules in order to score higher slots in Google searches. So Google made an example of them. For days, we saw neither hide nor hair of RapGenius on our favorite snow-white search page. Even if you Googled the exact name of the company, “Rap Genius,” their site didn’t come up until you clicked five pages into the search results. As a result, RapGenius traffic dropped off a cliff — plunging from over a million visitors per day to about 200,000.
As a result, RapGenius traffic dropped off a cliff — plunging from over a million visitors per day to about 200,000.
After RapGenius apologized publicly and worked overtime on Christmas to toe the line, Google forgave them and gave most of the traffic back (though not all). “To Google and our fans: we’re sorry for being such morons,” RapGenius literally said.
Behold this graph of RapGenius visitors:
It’s a dramatic story. It’s also not the first example of Google laying the smackdown on what Google defines as shady marketing. Over the years, they’ve penalized companies as diverse as BMW and J.C. Penney. In fact, several of Google’s own departments have been caught and punished for violating Google’s rules. There’s also no shortage of stories of smaller companies wiped out entirely by Google search penalties.
But how does Google define “shady marketing”? Isn’t there some tension between Google’s desire for clean search results free of marketers’ manipulations and the fact that Google sells ads on their search results?
More importantly, if Google’s algorithms can eviscerate high-profile companies and destroy small ones, what can they do to individual voices?
If Google is the primary organizer of information on the Internet, if they effectively control what most people see, then how quickly does their control tip over into censorship? And even if we trust Google itself to be even-handed in its information distribution, what makes us so sure that Googlers are the only ones who control the sacred algorithm?
Google’s Secret Sauce
The #1 position in any given Google search tends to get fully one-third of the traffic for that search. As for later pages of Google search results, forget it — about 95% of traffic drops off between Page 1 and Page 2.
Top slots in Google searches are so valuable that there’s a lucrative marketing specialty, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), devoted to manipulating those rankings. Some optimizers use annoying tricks (like spam or link-trading, which is what RapGenius did); other optimizers are more careful and play the game by Google’s rules. Google’s search algorithms are a closely guarded secret because the company is locked in an ongoing arms race against sneaky optimizers.
The general leading Google’s war effort is named Matt Cutts. He comes across as an awesomely skilled hunter, patiently stalking the wild SEO across the Internet savannah. In an interview with Wired, Cutts told the magazine that he dreams of an airtight search algorithm that would be impossible for spammers to manipulate, which could thus be publicly posted without fear. Cutts has also said that Google’s goal is to “break the spirits” of spammy search engine optimizers.
Cutts has also said that Google’s goal is to “break the spirits” of spammy search engine optimizers.
On the one hand, it’s awesome that Google puts so much effort into making its search rankings useful. I want to be really clear about this: I like and trust Google and Googlers. I’ve interviewed at the company and I have many friends there (hi folks). If someone put a gun to my head and demanded that I choose one corporation to totally control my life, then I might choose Google.
Still, no matter how much I like Google, I can’t help feeling unsettled by how much power they have over the information I find — and the information I produce! Although I understand the reasons for the secrecy around Google’s search algorithm, it is not comforting to see all that power locked in a black box.
Censorship Potential
In a 2011 antitrust hearing with the U.S. government, Google made the case that people could just go use another search engine. Indeed, in the wake of the 2013 NSA scandal, some people did defect to other search engines — but the vast majority didn’t. And after seeing RapGenius get slammed to the mat, I’m not reassured by the existence of Google’s “competition.”
It’s not just specific websites that Google can affect so strongly. Google has been developing the ability to prioritize web content by author. Which implies that Google is developing the ability to de-prioritize web content by author, too.
We’ve already seen government Internet manipulations both clumsy (like the State Department’s blatant purchase of Facebook fans) and clever (like the military deployment of fake social media identities to influence online discourse). Given what we learned about the NSA and Google during 2013, we might think about the government’s access to Google’s search algorithm.
To its credit, Google provides extensive transparency reports, which show us some explicit censorship by various governments that’s happening right now. But many of those interventions are clumsy and blatant. There’s any number of subtler possibilities. In general, how far can search results be bent before we label algorithmic re-organizations as “censorship?” — whether by corporate interests, or other ones?
In general, how far can search results be bent before we label algorithmic re-organizations as “censorship?” — whether by corporate interests, or other ones?
How quickly will we even notice such changes, if they happen to sites or authors that aren’t famous? What if the changes are on a far smaller scale than what happened to RapGenius? After all, moving certain search results from Page 1 to Page 2 will still have an enormous effect. A result doesn’t have to get pushed very far to be effectively buried.
Canaries In The Information Coal Mine
As I mentioned above, there are some Search Engine Optimizers who use annoying tricks, yet there are many who don’t. In fact, many SEOs sound… respectful of Google!
Will Critchlow, the founder of digital marketing agency Distilled, puts it this way: “We fundamentally believe that the work Distilled does (and that of many of our peers) is helpful to the Internet at large and not at all in conflict with Google’s mission. When working on search visibility for our clients, we are aiming to help them have great, accessible websites that cover topics the market wants. This is totally different from the attitude of seeking short term exploits that work until Google shuts them down.” (Full disclosure: Over the summer, I wrote a research report for Distilled.)
Jesse Avshalamov, a 9-year veteran of the SEO trenches who currently runs growth at Teespring, told me: “Google’s got a team of brilliant PhDs, dedicated to finding abuses of their algorithm and systematically wiping them them out. You may be able to outmaneuver them for a while, but eventually they will outsmart you, and then you’re back to square one, or worse. If you’re building a brand that’s meant to last, the long-term game will be played by their rules.”
Avshalamov added: “There’s a cultural divide that runs within SEO — the ‘do whatever you have to’ and the ‘keep it clean,’ which are equally vocal, though the former certainly make for more sensational news.”
Indeed, many marketers seem remarkably non-bitter, given that they stress constantly about Google’s whims while Google makes a fortune selling its own ads right on top of search results. Google has also moved more and more towards selling things itself — which makes it especially unsettling for marketers to talk about “playing by Google’s rules.”
Of course, it’s understandable that individual marketers and agencies don’t want to take on Big G. But what about government market regulators? The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently decided not to file charges against Google, yet the European Commission has been more aggressive. They’ve pursued complaints from services who say they have a hard time competing with similar services owned by Google, given that Google can prioritize its own products at the very moment that the vast majority of consumers are looking to buy.
One reason I’m interested in marketing is that, in a way, it’s the anti-censorship. Great activists, community organizers, and journalists often have a knack for audience-building that any good marketer would recognize. Marketing can be a canary in the information coal mine, helping us detect where knowledge flows freely and where it’s being stifled. I’m curious to see how marketing debacles like what happened to RapGenius will help us understand information’s movement.
Google has long claimed that there are strong internal walls between its salespeople and its search engineers, and I believe their intentions are good. I also think that Google’s anti-spam rules are legit, and I’m glad they exist. But although I like Google personally, I’m not convinced that regulators should. After all, it’s regulators’ job to make charismatic corporations stay classy, no matter how popular those corporations get.
So, <3 to Google, but I’m feeling unnerved that American regulators have let up the pressure. The more assurances and transparencies mega-powerful Internet corporations have to give the general public, the better.
The more assurances and transparencies mega-powerful Internet corporations have to give the general public, the better.
And after all, what sort of example does this set for the next Internet giant that gains Google’s level of control within our attention economy? For instance, assuming we trust Google, do we also trust Facebook and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon?
