User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/How we're testing the fandom.com domain migration/@comment-26335203-20181010024804/@comment-25029082-20181010184406

This will probably be deleted but I don't care.

Oh really? Let's see the trends...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Wikia,Fandom

Here is a comparison of Wikia and FANDOM results. For what was at earlier in 2010, Wikia had a lot of interest. On the other hand, FANDOM still struggles to gain at least 20% of interest from users. Alongside, Wikia still has a higher interest when compared to FANDOM and those that search for FANDOM is anyways searching for what is the definition of it, not this website itself.

Less than 1% of all FANDOM search results come from people searching for "wiki".

Yeah, because people is more used to the Wikia name over FANDOM. Out of the interests, people who search FANDOM will likely be searching something like "What is fandom?", groups in Tumblr, or even "wiki fandom". On the other hand, Wikia gains results like "Yugioh Wikia" (which if I'm correct is also planning to move, so there goes most of your traffic to this site), "Naruto Wikia," and "One Piece Wikia". This rebranding seems to lose most of your traffic and this URL change will likely hurt it even more.

People aren't searching for "[topic] wiki," they're just searching for the topic.

Then explain why I found out of the results "Yugioh Wiki", "RuneScape Wiki", and the like. How is people supposed to know more about a certain thing in a topic if they are just only given the idea of the topic?

Oh, and I'll compare with the other blogs sites similar to this, like Kotaku, Buzzfeed, and VICE, and get this result:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=VICE,Fandom,Kotaku,Buzzfeed

Out of all these others blog sites similar to FANDOM, VICE and Buzzfeed manages to achieve better traffic, so people who searches for these topics are more than likely to get results based from those blogs. On the other hand, the traffic here still continues to struggle with Kotaku's showing even more about how this would hurt the traffic.

The early results from the initial migration show us that Google is understanding FANDOM and Wikia as the same thing, and traffic has so far been unaffected.

If you actually took results from 2004-February 2007, that is likely before any of the FANDOM rebranding was even planned. Ever since January 2008, Wikia continues to grow in search results until 2010, when afterwards it found downfall in interests. However, FANDOM in the search interests sees very small growth in particular so it will take a good while to have it increase back. Added on the fact the rebranding will take away interest in Wikia if it does will only continue to hurt the traffic here.

The only reason of what's keep users on the wikis here is because of this:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Wikia,Fandom,Wiki

As you can see now, the term of "wiki" skyrockets and that more people is likely to find a wiki here if they search for this. And out of these terms based on "wiki", "Minecraft Wiki", "Wikitubia", "Facebook Wiki", "Terraria Wiki", and the forementioned "Naruto Wiki" are the best results, and since they are hosted here, people will likely find these more easily if there is a mention of "wiki" in the URL, hence "Wikia".

I respectfully and strongly oppose this URL change but if you think it would benefit your community without any disregards about the search trends, then go right ahead.

Oh, and in case any of you is wondering the harm that "WikiCities" to "Wikia" caused, I can assure you no damage happened:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Wikia,WikiCities