User blog:SlyCooperFan1/Say goodbye to your Google ranking

In case you haven't been informed, which most of us weren't, mobile browsing on any Wikia wiki has been updated to the new "Mercury" skin. It follows the same format as the Game Guides app, and was already the default for people who weren't logged in. Now, even if you're logged in, you'll have the Mercury skin. For more info on that, click here.

However, it's come to my attention that Wikia decided to pull a stupid move like most other "mobile-friendly" websites. Occasionally, you'll get a full-page advertisement that blocks the entire content and asks you to do something (like, in my case, pre-order Destiny: The Taken King Legendary Edition).

I'm not going to even get into Wikia's greed concerning how many annoying advertisements they try to throw on us. No, this is far worse than that; Wikia's greed is actually going to wipe out the Google search rankings of every wiki on the service.

Starting on November 1, Google will (thankfully and finally) penalize websites that have advertisements covering up the majority of the content, especially on mobile; these websites will lose the "mobile-friendly" tag and be ranked lower on Google's search engine. Since Mercury is now forced in all cases and occasionally has full-page advertisements, this means that all of Wikia's effort in being mobile-friendly will be in vain and all of our wikis will be lower-ranked on search engines, regardless of our SEO efforts. For more information on Google's smart move, click here.