There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis
An independent wiki operator reports that Google Search is effectively blacklisting new, standalone domains, forcing them to use subdomains of established sites to maintain visibility. The author suggests this is a defensive measure by Google to combat SEO spam that inadvertently harms legitimate independent projects.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing power of search engine algorithms to dictate the viability of independent web projects and the centralization of the internet.
Big week! We just finished moving the Overwatch and Fortnite wikis off of Fandom. It’s still my favorite thing in the world to help wiki editors grab control of their projects and make them awesome (and not covered with a dozen auto-playing video ads!)
Unlike most of the other wikis we host ( runescape.wiki , minecraft.wiki , gta.wiki …), both Overwatch and Fortnite are launching at subdomains of weirdgloop.org instead of on their own root domain, like (say) overwatch.wiki. There is an unusually good reason for this, and the rest of this post will be going into excruciating detail about:
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