Google Puts Rap Genius Back Atop Searches, Favoring Smart Results Over Holding A Grudge

Google apparently cares more about giving the best search results than punishing spammers, as it’s returning lyrics site Rap Genius to its high rankings for searches after it was exiled for SEO spam 10 days ago. What looked like a death sentence for Rap Genius’ traffic has turned into a slap on the wrist. Today Rap Genius detailed what it did wrong, and how it ditched the spammy links to get back in Google’s good graces.

Previously on “Rap Genius’ SEO blunders”, the startup had raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz to annotate the web. It’s site hosts lyrics, religious texts, legal documents, poems, and news and allows users to add explanations of what they mean. The Rap Genius founders are known as braggadocious rabble-rousers, and they showed off their ridiculousness on stage in an interview with me at TechCrunch Disrupt New York embedd below. There they discussed doing study drugs like Adderall while naked to make sure the stayed home and focused on building the site.

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Rap Genius steadly rose to the top of many search result pages thanks to links from bloggers and being venture funded so it doesn’t have to show ads like the aggressive pop-ups and ringtone scams that pollute competing lyrics sites like AZlyrics and MetroLyrics.

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US judge rules warrantless gadget searches at the border aren't unconstitutional

A United States district judge has ruled that gadget searches upon crossing into the US aren't a breach of the First and Fourth Amendments. In 2010, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Press Photographers and grad student Pascal Abidor challenged the 2008 ruling that authorizes unwarranted device search-and-seizures, saying that they exist to counteract protected speech and certain confidentiality privileges. However, district judge Edward Korman remarks that because the chance of the searches is so low (he estimates odds of less than five in a million, although the government's count has been disputed) there aren't any grounds for dismissing the rulings.

He further states that this is no different than having your baggage or person examined before crossing into the US, and that the government simply doesn't have enough resources to inspect the devices of everyone who enters the country. Most worrying however is when Korman says that it's "foolish, if not irresponsible" that the plaintiffs would store sensitive data on their gadgets in the first place. The ACLU is considering appealing the decision but attorney Catherine Crump tells the New York Times that for now the status quo remains, and in many areas of the country, "the government is free...to conduct all types of electronic device searches without reasonable suspicion."

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Web App Searchlet Lets You Perform Multiple Searches Without Opening A Gazillion Tabs

At any given moment during my working day, I have browser tabs open for my email account, Feedly, TechCrunch, WordPress, Convo, Twitter, Google Calendar, Reddit, Pinterest and Facebook. That’s in addition to all the sites I am using for research (or to procrastinate) and desktop apps like Skype and Spotify. As a result of tab overload, and my ever-dwindling supply of brain cells, I often suffer from Google Amnesia. Searchlet won’t give me back the bits of my brain I have already lost, but the handy Web app will increase my productivity by making searches a lot easier.

To use Searchlet, all you need to do is install it onto your bookmarks bar. When you highlight a term and click on your Searchlet button, a sidebar slides into the left of your browser page and shows you results from four online references: Google, Wikipedia, Google News and open content dictionary Wiktionary. The sidebar is unobtrusive and fast. Its results refresh when you highlight new terms and it disappears as soon as you close it.

Creators Mark Fazzini and Spencer Simonsen met while they were both undergraduates at the University of Florida and collaborated on several projects before getting their degrees, including a mobile deals platform and an online music community. Fazzini’s background is in technology sales and the financial services industry, while Simonsen is a web programmer and developer currently working at LinkedIn. Searchlet is the first product from Spin Labs, which the two launched to “create innovative web products for businesses and consumers.”

Searchlet is handy for all Internet users who want to increase their productivity (or just keep their browser tabs manageable), but I think it’s especially useful for students, researchers and easily distracted information junkies. Fazzini says the next version of Searchlet, which will be released in late January, will include results from sites like Google Images, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn (I am excited about seeing results from Google Images in the Searchlet sidebar because that means I will be able to use it as a visual dictionary when reading Chinese-language sites). A mobile version is also in the works.

“A few months ago, Spencer was reading one of his favorite tech blogs and noticed that he opened seven different tabs just to search different terms and concepts on Google and Wikipedia. After getting very anxious about the number of tabs that were open (like most of us do), he thought about how nice it would be to get the relevant information he was looking for, right there on the page,” Fazzini told me by email.

“Our goal is to enhance the online web browsing experience for everyone, by adding an additional layer which allows you to get the information you need within a few short seconds,” he adds. “Not only does this enhance the online web browsing experience and make users more productive, but having a tool like Searchlet at your fingertips can increase a user’s impulse to gather new knowledge dramatically.” 

The duo claims that Searchlet can increase search speeds by up to 86%, a figure that they arrived at base on initial testing that looked at how long it took a user to highlight text, open up a new tab and then navigate to Google, Wikipedia, Google News or Wiktionary to perform a search, a process they found took about 10 to 15 seconds for each site. Using Searchlet reduced that time to about four to six seconds.

“We concluded that searching all four sources (Google, Wikipedia, News, Dictionary) by hand takes around 50 seconds on average and with Searchlet it only takes six. This is how we found Searchlet to be around 86% faster than searching by hand,” Fazzini explains.

On the monetization side, Fazzini says Searchlet can potentially earn revenue through advertising, partnerships and premium resources, but the startup’s current focus is getting Searchlet on as many bookmark bars as possible in order to improve its functionality. To start using Searchlet, visit its site and drag the button onto your bookmark bar.

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