There’s a new “Google Jail” for independent wikis

独立维基百科面临新的“谷歌监狱”

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!) 这是重要的一周！我们刚刚完成了将《守望先锋》和《堡垒之夜》维基从 Fandom 迁移出来的工作。帮助维基编辑们夺回项目控制权，并将其打造得尽善尽美（且不再被十几个自动播放的视频广告覆盖），这依然是我世界上最喜欢做的事情！

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: 与我们托管的其他大多数维基（如 runescape.wiki, minecraft.wiki, gta.wiki 等）不同，《守望先锋》和《堡垒之夜》维基此次是在 weirdgloop.org 的子域名下启动，而不是像 overwatch.wiki 那样使用独立的根域名。这背后有一个非常特殊的原因，本文接下来的部分将详细剖析：

• a frustrating change that Google made in early 2024 to how it treats brand-new-domains
• the wide-ranging effects of these changes on the entire independent wiki ecosystem
• how I’m trying to work around this new “Google Jail” for the wikis that we host
• 谷歌在 2024 年初对全新域名处理方式所做出的令人沮丧的调整；
• 这些调整对整个独立维基生态系统产生的广泛影响；
• 我如何尝试为我们托管的维基绕过这个新的“谷歌监狱”。

If you have a new domain, only the main page shows up on Google search results

如果你拥有一个新域名，谷歌搜索结果中只会显示主页

These March 2024 changes have a specific “failure mode” on Google Search which has made it even more difficult for a certain class of new wikis (and most likely, new websites in general) to show up in search results. For the last two years, with very few exceptions, wikis on brand new domains will not show up on Google Search for anything other than the main page. 2024 年 3 月的这些变动在谷歌搜索中产生了一种特定的“故障模式”，使得特定类别的维基（以及很可能包括所有新网站）更难出现在搜索结果中。在过去两年里，除了极少数例外，使用全新域名的维基在谷歌搜索中除了主页外，其他页面都不会显示。

Since ~85% of video game wiki traffic comes from Google, and wikis (obviously) have many popular pages other than the main page, this is a pretty catastrophic outcome. 由于约 85% 的游戏维基流量来自谷歌，而维基（显而易见）除了主页外还有许多热门页面，这是一个相当灾难性的后果。

Hollow Knight wiki: into Google Jail in March 2024, back out 9 months later

《空洞骑士》维基：2024 年 3 月进入“谷歌监狱”，9 个月后重见天日

Here’s what we think we know: This has happened to about 90% of wikis I’m aware of that have launched on brand new domains since the March 2024 Google core update. This includes gta.wiki and hytalewiki.org that we host, hollowknight.wiki, the official Path of Exile 2 wiki, and a couple dozen smaller wikis. 以下是我们目前掌握的情况：据我所知，自 2024 年 3 月谷歌核心更新以来，约 90% 在全新域名上启动的维基都遭遇了这种情况。这包括我们托管的 gta.wiki 和 hytalewiki.org，以及 hollowknight.wiki、《流放之路 2》官方维基，还有几十个较小的维基。

This happens regardless of whether the content is brand-new, or derived from something else (like Fandom) that Google is already indexing. It’s not the conventional “duplicate content” issue that wikis have had to deal with for the last decade. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the actual “ranking” of the domain - there’s quite a few examples where the main page is actually beating Fandom’s main page on Google, and yet that’s the only page that shows up at all for the entire domain. 无论内容是全新的，还是从谷歌已经索引的其他来源（如 Fandom）迁移过来的，这种情况都会发生。这并不是维基过去十年一直需要处理的传统“重复内容”问题。它似乎与域名的实际“排名”关系不大——有很多例子显示，其主页在谷歌上的排名实际上超过了 Fandom 的主页，但整个域名却只有主页能被搜到。

This “Google Jail” lasts for an unclear period of time, sometimes up to a year, and is also sometimes ”defeated” by big game updates that cause significant new traffic/content to come to the wiki. Undertale and Vampire Survivors are examples of wikis that defeated the Google Jail by waiting it out and having a big game update. It can intermittently start and stop, sometimes getting out of Google Jail for a few months and then going back in again. It seems to always eventually stop. 这种“谷歌监狱”持续的时间不确定，有时长达一年，有时也会因为重大的游戏更新带来大量新流量/内容而“被破解”。《传说之下》(Undertale) 和《吸血鬼幸存者》(Vampire Survivors) 就是通过等待和大型游戏更新成功逃离“谷歌监狱”的例子。它可能会断断续续地出现，有时逃离几个月后又会重新陷入。但它似乎最终总会结束。

Subdomains of existing domains are totally fine

现有域名的子域名完全不受影响

Since this Google issue started, we’ve also launched a number of wikis on subdomains of an existing, established domain (wiki.leagueoflegends.com, wiki.warframe.com, hypixelskyblock.minecraft.wiki). Every single one of these has been immediately successful for getting articles other than the main page indexed on Google. It doesn’t even need to be a popular domain! 自这个问题出现以来，我们也在一些现有的、成熟的域名子域名下启动了多个维基（如 wiki.leagueoflegends.com, wiki.warframe.com, hypixelskyblock.minecraft.wiki）。每一个都立即成功地让主页以外的文章被谷歌索引。甚至不需要是热门域名！

overwatch.weirdgloop.org, which launched just 7 days ago, is already doing better on page-indexing than any of the wikis currently in Google Jail. 7 天前才上线的 overwatch.weirdgloop.org，其页面索引表现已经超过了目前所有身陷“谷歌监狱”的维基。

This massively changes the strategy for new wikis

这极大地改变了新维基的策略

I’ve always said that the only legitimately hard part about moving your wiki off Fandom is that you have to wage a years-long Google war against the zombified corpse left over on Fandom. When you’ve got the game’s community on your side and you’re not dealing with the new-domain issues, this is genuinely not that hard… 我一直说，将维基从 Fandom 迁移出来唯一真正困难的部分，是你必须与 Fandom 上留下的僵尸残骸进行长达数年的谷歌搜索战争。当你拥有游戏社区的支持，且不需要处理新域名问题时，这其实并不难……

…but when your wiki is simply not able to get its pages to show up because of this Google Jail, that doesn’t matter. You’re not going to get the majority of readers, which to me is what determines the success or failure of a move from Fandom. ……但当你的维基因为这个“谷歌监狱”而无法显示页面时，其他因素都不重要了。你无法获得大多数读者，而对我来说，这才是决定从 Fandom 迁移成功与否的关键。

So now, when wiki communities come to us asking if we can host them, the conversation about domains is much more complicated than it used to be. We have three basic options: 所以现在，当维基社区来找我们寻求托管时，关于域名的讨论比过去复杂得多。我们有三个基本选择：

1. stick with (say) overwatch.wiki - this is the natural place where everyone expects it to be, but it’ll get wrecked on Google
2. try to arrange something with the game studio at (say) wiki.overwatch.com - this is achievable about half of the time, but not consistently
3. put them, at least temporarily, at a subdomain of a domain we already control, that has decent domain authority
4. 坚持使用（例如）overwatch.wiki —— 这是大家预期的自然位置，但它会在谷歌搜索中惨遭重创；
5. 尝试与游戏工作室协商，使用（例如）wiki.overwatch.com —— 这大约有一半的成功率，但并不稳定；
6. 至少暂时将它们放在我们已经控制的、具有一定域名权威性的域名子域名下。

None of these are great options, but I hope it makes sense why we’ve been gravitating towards option 3 recently. 这些都不是完美的方案，但我希望大家能理解为什么我们最近倾向于选择第三种方案。