There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by Suzuran » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

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…

My mother was looking for cheat codes for some video game she was playing and she ended up on Fandom. I had installed uBlock Origin for her because she had a history of being victimized by malware. Fandom detected it and served her the "BLOCKING ADS IS STEALING FROM YOUR FELLOW FANS!" scare stuff, with instructions for removing uBO. She followed the instructions because she thought that's what she needed to do to access the information, and Fandom immediately served her ransomware.

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

#102

Post by orbital-decay » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

bariscan wrote: post #61

this is not only wiki, unfortunately google tries something at least for 6 months and "shadowing" is real thing. no manual action, no information, indexes here and valid; but no imp & clicks. make some social noise. signals has always good impact.

Google doesn't care. Even massive efforts with humongous communities behind them are ignored for years. Try an incognito tab with a random element from a random game, for example this Fallout 4 quest:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Unlikely+Valentine

Fandom, Reddit, IGN, Eurogamer, everything is on the front page except fallout.wiki which is where the community is now.

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

#103

Post by swed420 » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #29

jimnotgym wrote: post #22

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

Yet you can be absolutely sure that Google is training their AI products on the same pages they do not want to show to their search users.

In recent years I've thought about making blogs, videos, etc to share knowledge, but the incentive is just no longer there. Even before AI, youtube/web search/etc had plenty of problems, and now they're compounded.

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

#104

Post by saghm » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #100

When I still payed Dota, there was a wiki hosted on fandom. The experience was terrible. It wasn't always update-to-date with the latest patch, and on mobile there were so many ads rendering the whole thing unreadable. The catch is that there was a better wiki, called Liquipedia. But Google never showed it first and I kept getting tricked to click that shitty fandom site. (It was years ago. But I just tested it a bit…

Back when I played WoW, at some point the people running the fandom wiki "forked" it to move to different hosting, and I think even now years later the fandom one (which stopped receiving updates when the fork happened) is still ranked higher in Google searches

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

#105

Post by EdwardDiego » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

orbital-decay wrote: post #102

bariscan wrote: post #61

this is not only wiki, unfortunately google tries something at least for 6 months and "shadowing" is real thing. no manual action, no information, indexes here and valid; but no imp & clicks. make some social noise. signals has always good impact.

Google doesn't care. Even massive efforts with humongous communities behind them are ignored for years. Try an incognito tab with a random element from a random game, for example this Fallout 4 quest: https://www.google.com/search?q=Unlikely+Valentine Fandom, Reddit, IGN, Eurogamer, everything is on the front page except fallout.wiki which is where the community is now.

Don't worry, the AI overview links to fallout.wiki...

Seriously, it does, but I'm very much sarcastic when I say "don't worry".

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

#106

Post by 6thsurvivor » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

dreadpiratewiki wrote: post #14

fakwandi_priv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with wiki.gg?

run by the same people that sold Gamepedia to Fandom, is owned by private equity, and has been rapidly increasing ads/monetization over the last couple years

wasn't that a part of a curse inc. leftover bundle after amazon got twitch and got rid of everything else? Afair nobody else wanted that, but can't find the old HN post on it

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

#107

Post by alxfrnr » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

It's not just for new wikis. It's called the Google sandbox in the SEO world and it's something that had been around for years and affects every new domain.

New domains need to prove they can be trusted to get out of the sandbox and external links from trusted sources are the best way to do that and shorten the time spent in the sandbox.

Big wikis like this go online with thousands of pages on a brand new domain. Without any external trust signal it just looks like spam for Google

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

#108

Post by sph » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

cookmeplox wrote: post #19

copper-float wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 cou…

> it's literally just named after a random item in RuneScape I discovered

Well, at least you didn't go with fossilised dung.

https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Fossilised_dung

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

#109

Post by warmedcookie » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #100

When I still payed Dota, there was a wiki hosted on fandom. The experience was terrible. It wasn't always update-to-date with the latest patch, and on mobile there were so many ads rendering the whole thing unreadable. The catch is that there was a better wiki, called Liquipedia. But Google never showed it first and I kept getting tricked to click that shitty fandom site. (It was years ago. But I just tested it a bit…

It's still terrible. Also, congrats on escaping the cancer.

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

#110

Post by sph » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

KingMob wrote: post #5

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

Fun fact: Fandom was co-founded by Jimmy Wales

"On February 4, 2026, Jay Sullivan was named the new CEO. In a public statement following the arrival of Fandom's new CEO, the company's president, Jimmy Wales, mentioned that they intend to incorporate additional AI tools into Fandom Wikis to adapt to internet searches". No comment.