Hacker News

There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

74 points by pizzaiolo 6 hours ago | 23 comments

remedan 43 minutes ago

I enjoy the this extension that redirects search results from Fandom and other such terrible hosts to their higher quality indie alternatives.

https://github.com/IndieWikiBuddy/indie-wiki-buddy

skhameneh 2 hours ago

For a while, Fandom was having annoying ads and content that would get past my ad blocker. But a recent update has caused them to block users with ad blockers.

I've been looking for explicit alternatives to Fandom for some content and it's annoyingly sparse.

Just the other day I saw some meme about how if we saw as many ads taking over sites like we do now, that was a sure sign of having your machine getting infected with a virus.

Generally I've found a good portion of websites that block users with ad blockers tend to be the worst offenders with aggressive ads...

jimnotgym 18 minutes ago

I'm going to agree.

I launched a website that is niche a few weeks ago, but totally unique. After a couple of weeks search console wakes up to tell me that they have indexed one page in 80. And that the top search term that is finding my site says exactly the name of one of my pages, yet Google is showing my homepage in search!

Way to help your users

einpoklum 5 minutes ago

> Way to help your users

Dear Jim,

At Google, our intent is to help our stockholders, not our users.

Sincerely,

Alphabet inc.

rao-v 3 hours ago

As a bandaid solution we probably just need a good base domain for game wikis attached to a somewhat trustworthy foundation (that won’t sellout to Fandom in a week). Agree that wierdgloop.org is not … great

copper-float 32 minutes ago

What's wrong with weird gloop? The RuneScape wikis are very high quality, same with the Minecraft wiki. Cook and others running are transparent and seem to have good intentions.

cookmeplox 23 minutes ago

I think you can love what we're doing with the wikis, but also be candid that it's not an optimal reader-facing domain name. It was never really intended to be that - it's literally just named after a random item in RuneScape I discovered

But it ended up being the only reasonable place we owned where we could put Fortnite, Overwatch and Valheim wikis that wouldn't get crushed by this new Google jail situation. Of course the alternative is what the parent comment suggests ("probably just need a good base domain for game wikis") - but you have to get THAT domain out of Google jail first. Chicken and egg.

fakwandi_priv 2 hours ago

What’s wrong with wiki.gg?

dreadpiratewiki 47 minutes ago

[dead]

fergie 20 minutes ago

I am slightly on the fence about this. If the goal is simply to provide a good platform for people to create and share information with each other, then it shouldn't matter if the wiki is indexed in Google or not, in fact "invisibility" might even increase the quality of contributions.

OTOH if the goal is to monetize other people's contributions then yes, I totally get why the "Google jail" would be bad for that, but I'm just not sure that its a cause worth fighting for- that road basically leads to a new Fandom.

jdranczewski 2 minutes ago

I think it's fair to say that if the wiki's intent is to share information with people, you want people (and not just the inner circle of those in the know) to be able to find it. And the way most people find things is on Google.

cookmeplox 12 minutes ago

I think this logic falls apart if you realize that wikis only "work" when you're able to get some of the readers to turn into long-term contributors, and losing 90% of your traffic by not showing up on Google is a great way to kill that funnel.

There's a ton of historical evidence of wiki migrations (1) starting out with all of the editors and none of the readers, (2) not doing anything to get those readers to the new site, and (3) ultimately losing the whole war because the reader->editor flow was still happening on the Fandom wiki. "Invisibility" is absolutely not desirable here, even if your only goal is maximizing the amount of good contributions.

josephjrobison 2 hours ago

The bar has been raised on all web content for Google to index, esp new domains like you say but even some subdomains.

That answer is quality content (higher than AI or human medians), links and pr and social activity and mentions, and then user experience.

microtherion 49 minutes ago

And yet, I have to dig my way through pages upon pages of AI trash sites for many Google queries. Somehow THOSE don’t seem to have a problem getting indexed (Maybe they run a sufficient number of ads?).

watwut 49 minutes ago

Google search results dont care about content quality. And did not for years already. It killed good quality blogs and sites long before the AI slop came in.

KingMob 3 hours ago

This is a shame because Fandom is frequently terrible, but also consumes all the oxygen.

nephihaha 2 hours ago

It depends on which part. It is certainly heading down the same route as Wikipedia with all the problems that entails. You're usually better off on a smaller Fandom wiki as it won't have beeb taken over yet.

The James Bond wiki is particularly bad, but Memory Alpha seems to be better run.

einpoklum 3 minutes ago

> It is certainly heading down the same route as Wikipedia with all the problems that entails.

Can you elaborate on what that means? i.e. what aspect of Wikipedia, and in what way Fandom is heading there?

miladyincontrol 3 hours ago

I dont know about this, I've been heading a wiki for a rather specific niche that was made about 1.5 years ago and it easily got most top results for it's focus in just a few months.

It sounds like the issue isnt for "independent wikis" but for wikis competing with an existing domain already hosting one on the topic, in this case fandom.com's.

cookmeplox 43 minutes ago

What's the wiki? I'm always interested to get more data points on this, because it has definitely applied to wikis for brand new topics that aren't competing with anything on Fandom (it's not the same as the normal "duplicate content penalty" that people talk about)

nephihaha 2 hours ago

Google has been removing blogs from its searches for years now. You have to search for them specifically. All part of the de-democratisation of the web.

LoganDark 37 minutes ago

Anyone remember when "Fandom" was called Wikia? It really started going down the gutter when it started TikTokifying itself by trying to act as an entertainment hub. It was supposed to be a neutral resource for people to build community-driven knowledge bases but it turned into some real gamified garbage. I've never really been comfortable with the concept of addressing a "fandom" as one whole anyway, even in general, so the new act is just complete crap to me.

ButlerianJihad 20 minutes ago

Fandom probably hosts more copyrighted images and media than the Internet Archive does.

Entertainment studios can often turn a blind eye to use of their properties when it's by fans, for fans, and promotes those franchises. They are not sending C&D to people making avatars, or cosplaying, or memeing their screengrabs into notoriety.

It is weird to think that the WMF and Wikia/Fandom had a common founder and origin.

robin0716 6 hours ago

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leonidasrup 2 hours ago

Courts should review past decisions

Field v. Google, Inc. (2006)

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-a...

Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. (2015)

https://www.flaglerlawgroup.com/a-new-era-for-fair-use-court...