Forum:Wikia sites showing up in a Google Search

Okay a couple months ago I made The Finger Lakes Wiki and added a lot of articles and pictures to it in a short time period. I noticed it took a while and a pretty narrow search query (almost always using quotations" to get it to come up in a Google Search. Is this normal? It has been a couple months now; I realize it takes time. Last year when I first discovered Wikia I made a couple stupid ones; "RCA Wiki" and "Allis Chalmers Wiki", they are almost blank. BUT, the thing is, they come up EASILY in a search query, such as simply RCA Wiki. But the finger lakes wiki which I have actually put effort into doesn't seem to be showing up too easily yet. And when it does it's always an obscure article, never the main page, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, for specific articles certainly should show up, however they should be more relevant. Also, there have only been a few edits made by people other than me in the last two months since it has been created, so it's getting some traffic, but not much. One edit was the addition of a link, the rest were minor grammatical edits. In summary, is there something I should know about Wikia and search engines? I understand that it is reasonable for a new Wikia to take time to show up as it should be reviewed for legitimacy before being trafficked. I know google has the power to remove sites from their database, they do it to sites that are nothing but linkspam. It's the same reason an Official Site always comes up exactly RIGHT before Wikipedia. Daniel Christensen 21:09, April 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * http://fingerlakes.wikia.com/wiki/The_Finger_Lakes_Wiki


 * Hi Daniel, If you have more info on Allis-Chalmers models you may be interested in the Tractors Wiki for all brands of Tractor & Construction Plant, I started to go past wikipedia's notability limitations and list all models & specs. (BTW It incorporates some of your Allis material from Wikipedia).


 * After that plug ;) - I found that it took a fair time for tractor wiki to appear in the search results for 'common' searches. I have added links to and from other web sites on related subjects & linked from Forums, as i read someware that that helps. The pages are also cross-linked internally & I try to give all the images proper named title that will help them show in searches for images of the different models. But the key has to be content as the more content there is to look at the longer hopefully visitors stay and their is more for search engines to find. I must say i'm a little disappointed at the number of editors I've attracted, but steam engine, tractor & construction machinery fans appear to prefer to frequent Forums or edit wikipedia. The biggest sites are frequented by large numbers of teanagers in the main for popular computer games, TV shows and the like. A lot of the niche sites (wiki's) have a relativly small group of regulare editors from what i've seen. My Refers widget gives me 1.2 million from Bing and 1 million from Google, 900k from google uk and only 250k from Yahoo in the last 6 months, which when i look at some of the other wiki's looks good, but is poor compared to fannon & game sites. On actual page visits Cat is way out infront at nearly 20,000, Draglines are in the no 10 spot with 4300 and IH in the no 20 spot has 3100 with Allis at number 21. This is after 2 years (but the counters stopped functioning for a time).


 * Your Finger Lakes Wiki has some nice photos and is building a steady number of articles,(a few random pages brought up a number of relativly short pages). Keep steadily expanding the pages were possible and creating more articles, when you have time and it will grow. yes it can get a bit lonely at times, but have a break and look at other wikis, search out info or do abit of wikipedia editing for a change. I got a bit disalusioned after a few months but then after going out and visiting places to get photo to use I've now branched wider and have that many photos to add i cannot decide which bit to concentrate on.


 * BTW - The help pages give some tips on how to increase search engine rankings IIRC. - Good look building your wiki - (Note:others may have different ideas & views to me as to how to achieve a successful wiki) BulldozerD11 23:48, April 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * (add) Heres the link for the Google rankings tips (helpfully posted by 888th Avatar in reply to a similar post) - BulldozerD11 01:05, April 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've added your site to the Wikia hubs travel page, as it looks the most appropriate hub for it. This may help its visibility. If you create a small image of the logo you cold add it to the top section, with a short description, as that hub only has a few entries. (it may not help google rankings but could get more internal traffic to the site). - BulldozerD11 15:22, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your help; yeah I saw and read that improve your google rankings thing. I knew it all basically already except for the manually adding your URL to Google thing. I did that but if my site was ever going to be added to google it would have been by now anyway. I'm working on my site; thanks for adding it to the hub. I categorized it as a travel wiki so I thought it would already be added to such appropriate things. Daniel Christensen 17:13, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * Cheers, I notice it missing so added it in, I think wikia used to add them but the new automatic 'create your own wiki' buttons introduction appears to have stopped that (probally due to the huge number of very low content wikis created as 'tests' that now appear). I also found wikia deleted my original (home) hub at Hobbies but i'd added my self to the Auto one as well as the original dident really fit. If i find a new wiki with a bit of potential I occasionally add them to the relevant hub. My own wikis referrals appear to follow a very slow start then climbed steadily ! but i have virtually no other editors :(
 * BTW Some nice scenic photos on your wiki site. Good look at growing it - BulldozerD11 20:16, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Hey, since Wikia is full of those "ads by Google", and I noticed that when logged out so there were ads on every page (when I'm logged in there's only an ad on the mainpage) that they were all good and relevent ads to the Finger Lakes Region. So shouldn't google want to favor the site? Will it recognize if those ads start getting hits and start to rank the site higher? Daniel Christensen 23:10, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * I "Dont Know" is the short answer (and correct one), but logic dictates that the advert sensing software & click sensing through links will detect it and log any clicks or page loads as sometimes when a page loads you see stuff in the bottom of the browser for adsense and other similar address, and the 3 wikia spotlights all show a google 'string' in the aadress if you hover over them. So editng anominouly and visiting a few of the ad links may help 'count'


 * Check some of the links on the main wikia.com page for more info on how wikia.com (the business) works. You could try asking the Wikia Staff via special:contact for more info. - BulldozerD11 00:05, May 1, 2010 (UTC)