I don't think this has anything to do with wikis at all. Just the realities of SEO in 2026. Essentially, any new website claiming to have tons of information about a topic (like a recent video...
I don't think this has anything to do with wikis at all. Just the realities of SEO in 2026.
Essentially, any new website claiming to have tons of information about a topic (like a recent video game) are indistinguishable from content mills. Those sites that fabricate low-quality or even false information, and try and lure people in to view ads. Google has made a number of algorithm updates to try to stop these sites from ranking.
They need to prove the domains are legitimate through other signals. Traditional link building strategies still work. Reach out to sources on the topic (like the official dev site, fan sites, whatever), and see if they'll give you a link. Don't be spammy, obviously. Links should be legitimate and relevant.
Or just let it happen over time. Once it crosses a certain threshold, they escape the "jail" they're describing.
There's a few more direct approaches they can take. Using a subdomain of an established site and then later redirecting should work fine, as they suggested. 301s transfer a lot of link juice, and I would assume act as a very strong signal to a new domain's authority.
All the usual stuff applies, too. If you purchased your domain a week before launching the site, it's going to be an uphill battle. You need to establish a presence before expecting search traffic to follow. Also, if your website is 80% content overlap with existing Fandom articles, there'll be heavy duplicate content penalties. Doing some significant article cleanup will likely benefit you, and your readers.
Time to bring back webrings! I'm only half joking - I've seen it on a few amateur retro style websites but the links almost always go to sites run by the same author. Actual webrings would be a...
Traditional link building strategies still work.
Time to bring back webrings!
I'm only half joking - I've seen it on a few amateur retro style websites but the links almost always go to sites run by the same author. Actual webrings would be a real delight in the age of extreme SEO
I love this! There's so many hilariously (hopefully intentionally) bad websites out there that, for better or worse, never see the light of day. So many gems in here, thanks for the link!
I love this! There's so many hilariously (hopefully intentionally) bad websites out there that, for better or worse, never see the light of day. So many gems in here, thanks for the link!
If you have a new domain, only the main page shows up on Google search results
[...]
My best guess (and to be clear, this is a guess): Google decided they could no longer effectively identify and swat away SEO slop, and figured that just massively nerfing brand new domains was their next best option.
Subdomains of existing domains are totally fine
Since this Google issue started, we’ve also launched a number of wikis on subdomains of an existing, established domain (wiki.leagueoflegends.com, wiki.warframe.com, hypixelskyblock.minecraft.wiki). Every single one of these has been immediately successful for getting articles other than the main page indexed on Google.
It doesn’t even need to be a popular domain! overwatch.weirdgloop.org, which launched just 7 days ago, is already doing better on page-indexing than any of the wikis currently in Google Jail.
I’ve always said that the only legitimately hard part about moving your wiki off Fandom is that you have to wage a years-long Google war against the zombified corpse left over on Fandom. When you’ve got the game’s community on your side and you’re not dealing with the new-domain issues, this is genuinely not that hard…
…but when your wiki is simply not able to get its pages to show up because of this Google Jail, that doesn’t matter. You’re not going to get the majority of readers, which to me is what determines the success or failure of a move from Fandom.
There’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, though - based on our experiments so far, it seems like once we establish these new wikis fairly well on Google, it should be safe to move them off weirdgloop.org back to whatever the appropriate name was, while keeping the existing Google juice that the subdomain picked up. I’m hoping that in 6 months or so we can just 301 redirect overwatch.weirdgloop.org to overwatch.wiki, use Google’s change of address tool, and put these wikis to where they should have been in the first place.
The same issue affecting the wikis affected me, when I switched to macleod.ee from macleodsawyer.com it would not add the sites, except for my index page. Nothing else would come up, even if I set...
The same issue affecting the wikis affected me, when I switched to macleod.ee from macleodsawyer.com it would not add the sites, except for my index page. Nothing else would come up, even if I set up a 301 redirect on the old domain, explicitly added it to their search console, etc.
I eventually shifted back to the OG domain as it was registered far before the new age cap for content pages, new pages show up within a day or so. Just an overall very strange and abusive system for them to integrate.
That's good to know. I have a side project I've kept on a subdomain of my personal site that I've been considering moving to a new domain. Given the fuss, I think it's fine on the subdomain for...
That's good to know. I have a side project I've kept on a subdomain of my personal site that I've been considering moving to a new domain. Given the fuss, I think it's fine on the subdomain for now.
I wonder if the way to do this is to have the new domain 301 to the old domain for however long the jail sentence is, then once that's over swap the redirect the other way and use the domain change tool in the search console.
I wonder if this will have the effect of sort of "freezing" the web. I also wonder if it will create a market for legitimate sites in before the cap to sell their domains / pages to people looking...
I wonder if this will have the effect of sort of "freezing" the web.
I also wonder if it will create a market for legitimate sites in before the cap to sell their domains / pages to people looking to gain a foothold in the new era.
Seems just like another way they are using their marketshare to kill the useful internet. I have seen SEO low quality sites used as explanation for poor quality results but the results are not...
Seems just like another way they are using their marketshare to kill the useful internet.
I have seen SEO low quality sites used as explanation for poor quality results but the results are not simply low quality. They are low quality results with nearly no relevance to what I am searching for. Searching for anything slightly specific, technical or sounding too similar to some random mainstream term I am ready to throw my computer out the nearest window in less than five minutes of wading through random slop.
I remain unconvinced that with their reach and expertise they could not solve this properly if they wanted, but that is not the business they are in.
I was wondering what the hell happened! I get a lot of games and eventually make my way to the wikis. For a lot of them as of recent, it straight up can't find them even if I know they exist. If...
I was wondering what the hell happened! I get a lot of games and eventually make my way to the wikis. For a lot of them as of recent, it straight up can't find them even if I know they exist.
If they're trying to prevent the slop wiki spam, they're failing. Since they've changed usually the search results are full of random .xyz fake wiki pages that are ai generated and aren't even a wiki, just a few random pages of surface level info.
I don't think this has anything to do with wikis at all. Just the realities of SEO in 2026.
Essentially, any new website claiming to have tons of information about a topic (like a recent video game) are indistinguishable from content mills. Those sites that fabricate low-quality or even false information, and try and lure people in to view ads. Google has made a number of algorithm updates to try to stop these sites from ranking.
They need to prove the domains are legitimate through other signals. Traditional link building strategies still work. Reach out to sources on the topic (like the official dev site, fan sites, whatever), and see if they'll give you a link. Don't be spammy, obviously. Links should be legitimate and relevant.
Or just let it happen over time. Once it crosses a certain threshold, they escape the "jail" they're describing.
There's a few more direct approaches they can take. Using a subdomain of an established site and then later redirecting should work fine, as they suggested. 301s transfer a lot of link juice, and I would assume act as a very strong signal to a new domain's authority.
All the usual stuff applies, too. If you purchased your domain a week before launching the site, it's going to be an uphill battle. You need to establish a presence before expecting search traffic to follow. Also, if your website is 80% content overlap with existing Fandom articles, there'll be heavy duplicate content penalties. Doing some significant article cleanup will likely benefit you, and your readers.
Time to bring back webrings!
I'm only half joking - I've seen it on a few amateur retro style websites but the links almost always go to sites run by the same author. Actual webrings would be a real delight in the age of extreme SEO
They still exist and the most I stumble upon seem legit. There is an index
Time to bring back StumbleUpon to stumble upon web rings!
I love this! There's so many hilariously (hopefully intentionally) bad websites out there that, for better or worse, never see the light of day. So many gems in here, thanks for the link!
Or curated indices.
Webrings and stumbleupon used to be so much fun together.
The same issue affecting the wikis affected me, when I switched to macleod.ee from macleodsawyer.com it would not add the sites, except for my index page. Nothing else would come up, even if I set up a 301 redirect on the old domain, explicitly added it to their search console, etc.
I eventually shifted back to the OG domain as it was registered far before the new age cap for content pages, new pages show up within a day or so. Just an overall very strange and abusive system for them to integrate.
That's good to know. I have a side project I've kept on a subdomain of my personal site that I've been considering moving to a new domain. Given the fuss, I think it's fine on the subdomain for now.
I wonder if the way to do this is to have the new domain 301 to the old domain for however long the jail sentence is, then once that's over swap the redirect the other way and use the domain change tool in the search console.
ye olde blogroll over at blogroll.org has recently lead to some very interesting sites for me this week, such as this one i posted on here.
I wonder if this will have the effect of sort of "freezing" the web.
I also wonder if it will create a market for legitimate sites in before the cap to sell their domains / pages to people looking to gain a foothold in the new era.
Seems just like another way they are using their marketshare to kill the useful internet.
I have seen SEO low quality sites used as explanation for poor quality results but the results are not simply low quality. They are low quality results with nearly no relevance to what I am searching for. Searching for anything slightly specific, technical or sounding too similar to some random mainstream term I am ready to throw my computer out the nearest window in less than five minutes of wading through random slop.
I remain unconvinced that with their reach and expertise they could not solve this properly if they wanted, but that is not the business they are in.
I was wondering what the hell happened! I get a lot of games and eventually make my way to the wikis. For a lot of them as of recent, it straight up can't find them even if I know they exist.
If they're trying to prevent the slop wiki spam, they're failing. Since they've changed usually the search results are full of random .xyz fake wiki pages that are ai generated and aren't even a wiki, just a few random pages of surface level info.