Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24739709-20151201202536/@comment-452-20151213155142

It's a good thing that Wikia already pre-dodged people reporting negative results by saying:

"That said, thirty days post-change isn't enough time for the SEO pie to get baked - it'll take six months or more for google to completely re-crawl and update their historical rankings. We can do our best to play by the rules that we see set out before us, but we'll only know the results of following them after the pie gets baked. A coworker used the analogy, "it's like Battleship, except infinity ways to place your pieces and the enemy can re-place their ships after you hit them"."

- Wikia Staff

Wikia are playing battleship against us. No matter what we say, they will move their ships and tell us we "missed".

They do not care about "results" because "SEO" is a religion to them, not a science. They believe they are doing the right thing, and no amount of evidence will shake their faith in Google's SEO bible.

So far, out of my 16 test searches, 3 have negative changes, 1 has a positive change and 6 have no change.

edit: For the record, Wikia Staff have also tried to undermine my results by claiming that my google history effects my results: my results are identical with or without Incognito Mode, and I have encouraged them to verify my findings by doing the searches themselves.

edit: As of August 2016, out of my 16 test searches, all 16 have negative changes.

edit: I had thought that there was one term with positive change and one term with no change, but when re-testing all 16 terms in an incognito window for verification, it turns out that all have negative changes.


 * Search Term 1
 * Was the first 6 hits
 * Now only the first 4 hits


 * Search Term 2
 * Was first 4 hits
 * Now only the first 2 hits


 * Search Term 3
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now only the 2nd and 3rd hits


 * Search Term 4
 * Was the 1st hit
 * Now the 7th hit
 * I specifically predicted this change, because this term only appeared in the page title.


 * Search Term 5
 * Was 3rd behind IGN and gamefaqs
 * Now 4th behind IGN and gamefaqs


 * Search Term 6
 * Was 2nd behind IGN
 * Is now ahead of IGN
 * After repeating this search in an incognito window, it turns out that this term is now 3rd, behind IGN and gamefaqs.


 * Search Term 7
 * Was the 3rd and 4th hit
 * Now the 7th hit


 * Search Term 8
 * Was the first 2 hits
 * Now only the 1st hit


 * Search Term 9
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now the first 2 hits


 * Search Term 10
 * Was the first 6 hits
 * Now the first 2 hits


 * Search Term 11
 * Was the first 2 hits
 * Now the 5th hit


 * Search Term 12
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now only the 2nd 3rd and 4th hit


 * Search Term 13
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now the 5th hit


 * Search Term 14
 * Was the first 2 hits
 * Now only the 1st hit


 * Search Term 15
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now the first 2 hits


 * Search Term 16
 * Was the first 3 hits
 * Now the 3rd hit