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

weirdgloop.org

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

#31

Post by thaumasiotes »

rob74 wrote: post #27
nephihaha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well at least Wikipedia doesn't pester you with tons of ads that sometimes make it hard to even find the content (except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does).

> except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does

Well, I guess that's true.

It's worth noting, though, that wikipedia's donation demands cover more than the entire screen on a phone.

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

#32

Post by sersi »

fergie wrote: post #20

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…

Personally I liked it 10 years ago when I searched for something and Google actually delivered useful results that were related to what I was searching. Nowadays, when I search for anything, I mostly get blogspam, ai slop and useless articles or in the very best scenario, good content on a page infested with ads (luckily there's ublock origin).

So yeah, when my goal is to search for content that would be in a wiki, I'm ecstatic when I get an independent wiki over fandom. The Google Jail is the opposite of what I'd want.

Nowadays, I use Kagi which is better than Google but it's still not to the level of Google in 2010.

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

#33

Post by sph »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #28
einpoklum wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Way to help your users Dear Jim, At Google, our intent is to help our stockholders, not our users. Sincerely, Alphabet inc.

That's every company

It’s not every company having the effective monopoly on what can be found (i.e. what exists) on the web.

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

#34

Post by tuetuopay »

fergie wrote: post #20

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…

That's ignoring how video game wikis are used. People will google " " and completely miss the wiki. Or " ". Etc. So reachability and proper indexing by search engines is a must.

I've hit this on a few wikis where, for some (at the time inexplicable) reason, I'd get only the crappy Fandom wiki with above queries, and a good wiki when searching only for " wiki" after seeing a link to it on reddit.

When the reason is to move away from Fandom, get people what they are looking for, and perhaps attract contributors, this is an issue. Your average gamer won't route through the Wiki's main page, rather rely on the top Google search result for their issue.

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

#35

Post by iamacyborg »

remedan wrote: post #16

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

This is great for users, but it’s terrible for the SEO of those independent wikis as you’re telling Google you want to click on Fandom and Fextra links.

/edit

It appears this is no longer the case and the extension does things a lot better than it used to!

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

#36

Post by iamacyborg »

fakwandi_priv wrote: post #11
rao-v wrote: post #4

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

What’s wrong with wiki.gg?

Tons of ads.

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

#37

Post by nicce »

skhameneh wrote: post #10

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…

> 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.

That used to be the reality around decade ago for those who don’t know. Some applications changed the default front page of the browser, hijacked other websites to inject popups and so on

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

#38

Post by account42 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #31
rob74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least Wikipedia doesn't pester you with tons of ads that sometimes make it hard to even find the content (except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does).

> except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does Well, I guess that's true. It's worth noting, though, that wikipedia's donation demands cover more than the entire screen on a phone.

It's also worth noting that both Wikipedia and Fandom were co-founded by Jimmy Wales.

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

#39

Post by thaumasiotes »

account42 wrote: post #38
thaumasiotes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does Well, I guess that's true. It's worth noting, though, that wikipedia's donation demands cover more than the entire screen on a phone.

It's also worth noting that both Wikipedia and Fandom were co-founded by Jimmy Wales.

Well... why? Is he involved with either of them now? Is there a shared persisting influence of some kind?

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

#40

Post by maroider »

iamacyborg wrote: post #35
remedan wrote: post #16

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

This is great for users, but it’s terrible for the SEO of those independent wikis as you’re telling Google you want to click on Fandom and Fextra links. /edit It appears this is no longer the case and the extension does things a lot better than it used to!

That might be true for the default config in the extension, but you can also configure the extension to de-emphasize fandom wikis or outright hide them in search results. I don't quite remember the exact default config though.
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