User blog comment:Craiglpalmer/Wikia is now Fandom powered by Wikia/@comment-20644-20160930175246

Rather than reply to each individual comment, since a lot of them bring up very similar points, I wanted to take a few minutes and address the biggest questions and concerns in one comment. If you've followed some of the older comments on this blog then you've probably seen Craig and I address some of this already, but since similar concerns continue to be voiced, I thought it would be a good idea to address it again. Here are some general lines of questions and comments we're seeing:

'''Wikia is an established brand. Why change it?'''

Wikia is an established brand in the sense that it's been around for a decade now. It's also a unique name, as some of you have pointed out. However, being established and unique aren't necessarily the same thing as general brand awareness. Those of us who have lived and breathed Wikia every day are very aware of what it means, but consumer awareness around the brand name is very limited. Whether it's describing the site to friends, family, and even business partners, it's been very difficult to build awareness of the name Wikia and the entertainment brand that it's been representing because it's not a very widely understood name. It's perhaps too unique. I'm sure many of you have described Wikia by comparing it to Wikipedia in some way. Some of you think that's a good thing because of how it automatically relates to wikis, but that's not great from a branding perspective when that brand is looking to grow even further than it already has. As Craig noted, that was a factor in this decision.

So far, we've found that describing Fandom in our consumer analyses and to our business partners has really resonated. It's an intriguing and compelling name. It's instantly associated with pop culture, and it's very easy to associate with who we are as a brand: the largest entertainment fan site in the world, and the fan's voice in entertainment.

Now, that brings up a point some of you have mentioned: Wikia as a name is easily associated with wikis, and Fandom is not. You're right to an extent, but we've also found that the public awareness of wikis as a concept independent of Wikipedia is very low. Additionally, we do not consider ourselves a wiki farm either. The very original concept of Wikia (which was then known as Wikicities— see! We've rebranded before!) was a wiki farm, sure, but through all of the work you have put into your communities to become the leading pop culture experts, as well as the evolving nature of pop culture itself, Wikia evolved into way more than that.

So it's certainly understandable why, as wiki editors and admins, having a brand name that is immediately associated with wikis is important to you. That makes total sense from your perspective, but from our perspective we are growing a brand that offers more than just wikis. Wikis and the fan knowledge that they represent are still at the center of that brand, but we also now offer Discussions and news and stories. All of that ties together into a more comprehensive pop culture experience than what we previously offered, so the rebrand reflects that and uses a name that more broadly refers to who we are and what the fan experience is on the site.

'''You changed wiki to wikia once and then changed it back. Are you changing this back?'''

Short answer: no, we're not changing this back. Also, changing wiki to wikia wasn't the best idea ever.

Long answer:

In 2014, we told you that we were going to start referring to wikis as wikias. This was the result of recognizing a problem: Wikia as a company did not have great brand awareness, and it was still being seen by some as a wiki farm or an extension of Wikipedia. The idea behind making this change was simple: let's show off the uniqueness of Wikia communities by differentiating them from your average wiki. We wanted to show that fans on Wikia were different from your average editor and that communities here were different from your average wiki, because this is where the biggest pop culture experts and enthusiasts can be found.

All of those goals are still true, as is the brand limitation that the change sought to correct. Changing wiki to wikia was just the wrong way to go about it. That's not a change that we could highlight or make any sort of impact with. It was a very narrow-focused, micro-scale change. Rebranding a product, essentially, doesn't grow the brand of an entire company. Rebranding the company, however, does impact the brand of the entire company, and we're already seeing significant brand awareness around the name Fandom. Whereas changing wiki to wikia was simply an idea that we hoped would work, the Fandom brand has already been tested and we are confident from our research and analyses that it will be successful.

As Craig said earlier - over the last nine months, since the launch of Fandom news and stories, we've already seen that brand awareness for the name Fandom is almost equal to the name Wikia, a name that has been around for 10 years. That pretty clearly shows us that Fandom is on the right track, and that awareness will continue to grow for the name as it launches across the site.

I also have no problem telling you that, as the person who was responsible for talking to the community about the wiki to wikia change, I had a lot of reservations about it. Discussing it with you was, frankly, a difficult conversation because of those reservations. I am happy to say that I don't have those reservations here. The change to Fandom has been a collaborative process with all departments that has brought together the expertise of Community, Marketing, Design, Product, Sales, and more. We are very confident about this rebranding.

How will this impact SEO?

This answer will go into page titles, since some of you have brought up the length of page titles and what it will mean that Fandom powered by Wikia is part of it, as well as SEO about the rebranding in general. Note that much of this can be found in earlier comments, but I wanted to reiterate it again.

First, for those of you who may not know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. We have a help page for it here. SEO is all about the factors that go into how well a page ranks in a search engine like Google. Our SEO is pretty phenomenal, which is why you frequently see search results from Fandom communities at the top of Google search result.

So with that said, if you're just interested in the quick answer, then this won't impact SEO. The change of the brand name, in and of itself, will not have any impact on SEO, either positive or negative. It will remain the same. Of course, as brand awareness grows and more readers and editors come to the site to create content, then that will only lead to better SEO. But in the short-term, there's no impact either way.

So, for the longer answer, I wanted to talk about why there's no impact either way and why the analysis by our SEO team came up with that result.

Before the rebranding, page titles in search results ended in "Wikia." Now, they end in "Fandom powered by Wikia." Titles are a critical part of SEO, to be sure, but the most important and relevant words need to be on the left. That means that if you are looking up information about Captain Kirk in Star Trek, for example, the words "James T. Kirk" are going to be more valuable than "Wikia" (or, moving forward, "Fandom powered by Wikia"). James T. Kirk is far more relevant to the person doing the search than the site name.

On that note, a point of feedback in these comments has been that people search for " wiki" (like "star trek wiki") and won't search for " fandom." We do get a lot of traffic from " wiki," that is definitely true. We also may not see initial, significant traffic from " fandom," at least early on. However, changing the brand from Wikia to Fandom won't impact those search results. The words "powered by Wikia," the wiki names (i.e. " Wiki" being the most common naming convention), and the prevalence of the word wiki across the platform will retain the power of " wiki" search results and search traffic. Google has already digested this change well.

As a final note on SEO, there are so many factors that go into the strength of our search engine rankings. There's lots of loyalty to the Wikia name in these comments, and on the site in general and amongst users in general, but I'd encourage you not to confuse that with general brand awareness or inherent SEO value.

Fandom is a negative word

The idea of what the word fandom means to people is the most interesting part of the comments here. What's clear is that no matter how many people say fandom means one thing, other people will say it means something else. There are lots of different ideas about what the word fandom represents, and ultimately that's a good thing. Fandom powered by Wikia is a platform for people to come together and contribute what they want in many different ways. That's why in addition to wikis, we also launched news and stories in January and have been working on Discussions for over a year now. Each is a different kind of contribution experience that all ties together as one fan experience here on Fandom. And for those who do think fandom is a negative word, which is a small minority of people, then the positivity of the Fandom powered by Wikia brand can help change their minds.

Wiki content won't be negatively affected by this. Wikis are still there to document factual information. The idea that fandom means fan fiction or other fan-made activities or even conflict amongst fans is a very niche idea. Fandom, in general, has a broader public understanding that relates to being a fan of pop culture. In the last nine months since we launched Fandom news and stories, we've seen awareness for that brand grow to be almost equal to the 10 year old Wikia brand - and it's not being confused for fan fiction or other fan-made activities.

Not all wikis are entertainment-based

You're right that not all wikis will be best described as Fandom, but the vast majority are. I would suspect that some wikis that don't think it would be a fit for their scope could actually probably find that it's an apt name. For certain cases, like advocacy-related wikis, we will be highlighting them on a new corporate page at Wikia.org, to be launched on October 4th, that highlights advocacy and charity related wikis.

Beyond that, it's important that we have a brand name that best represents the site, and Fandom does just that. That doesn't mean that non-pop culture wikis aren't welcome, though.

I think that should cover the main points of feedback and concern that have been posted here. I will also reply to some other individual comments that have been brought up by one or two people and that were not included in this long reply.