User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/We're updating the look of categories to improve your community's SEO/@comment-35422172-20181215234751

I don't like the new category template. The images are too small to be useful, and add unnecessary spacing to articles which have no image. Merging subcategories makes them hard to find and less useful as a navigation tool.

SEO is important, but Wikia already has some of the best Google rankings, often appearing above larger wikis on the same topic. User experience is more important.