There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis
weirdgloop.org48 points by pizzaiolo 5 hours ago
48 points by pizzaiolo 5 hours ago
I enjoy the this extension that redirects search results from Fandom and other such terrible hosts to their higher quality indie alternatives.
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...
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
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.
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?).
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.
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.
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)
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.
This is a shame because Fandom is frequently terrible, but also consumes all the oxygen.
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.
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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...