[akshat]

I don't understand how Rap Genius' hack was any worse than what Mixpanel does with its free plan.

https://mixpanel.com/free/

Here, they are bribing customers to link to their site? Would this not be illegal too?

[suhail]

It's different: it's a recommendation of our product and it drives real clicks back to Mixpanel (excluding google). Powered by badges are extremely common and are more akin to an ad. The main difference is that Rapgenius' sole goal is to game Google, ours is not.

[pcooelt]

it's actually not - Matt Cutts specifically made a video about these exact type of "widget" links a few months ago. He recommended that they be no-followed.

[akshat]

Thanks. The main reason I ask is because I would like to do something similar with my product. However, after this fiasco, was skeptical about it.

If it is an ad, then it would definitely be safer to mark the link as nofollow as ads are not allowed to be links with SEO benefits.

[smirksirlot]

Mixpanel isn't completely dependent on SERPs. It is a different user acquisition/awareness tactic.

Also, illegal isn't really the right term to use here.

[robryan]

I don't understand how stat counter gets away with what they do. They offer stats similar to google analytics. They seem to get most of their ranking from including a link back to them with a random anchor text from a set of terms they want to rank for in the JavaScript block to install stats.

[bjourne]

Nice catch. Since they are basically offering the same deal, reward for links, they must also be violating the same rule.