Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24739709-20151201202536/@comment-452-20160926210053

Back in December, when I said "In 30 days I'll perform the searches again and update the ticket with the new results.", Wikia Staff replied with: "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."

Well, it has now been more than 6 months. Enough time for most people to have forgotten all about this, which I expect was the point.

As of August 2016, out of my 16 test searches submitted to Wikia on December 5th, all 16 have negative changes.

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, it turns out those results were skewed in Wikia's favour because I hadn't cleared my cookies in a couple of days.

I'm not making my search terms public, but they have been submitted to Wikia Staff for verification, and they have not disputed the accuracy of these search results.


 * 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

After submitting these results to Wikia Staff yesterday, their reply was: "it's clear that, taken as a whole, the SEO changes we made eight months ago were a net gain. That's why we made them."

While I provided them with solid independently-verifiable experimental data which proves a net loss, they have again replied with empty words that have nothing to back them up.

Given that Wikia Staff to not possess a time machine, the claim that an unproven "net gain" today is "Why they made the changes 8 months ago" is bizarre. They did not have access to today's data 8 months ago, therefore today's data was not used 8 months ago to inform their decision. This line again reinforces my earlier statement that Wikia Staff made these changes due to "faith", and have nothing to do with evidence.

Does anyone else have any results to share?