Google's New-Domain Penalty Is Quietly Killing Independent Wikis

Weird Gloop, the indie wiki host behind runescape.wiki and minecraft.wiki, just moved the Overwatch and Fortnite wikis off Fandom—but not to their own root domains. Instead, they're parked at subdomains of weirdgloop.org. The reason isn't branding; it's a workaround for what the team calls a new “Google Jail.”

Since Google's March 2024 core update, wikis launched on brand-new domains have been almost entirely invisible on Google Search—only the main page shows up, no matter how good the content is. Weird Gloop estimates this has hit about 90% of new wiki domains they know of, including gta.wiki, hollowknight.wiki, and the official Path of Exile 2 wiki.

This isn't the usual duplicate-content problem. It happens whether the content is fresh or migrated from Fandom. It's not about domain authority either—the main page often outranks Fandom's, yet no other page appears. The jail can last up to a year, sometimes lifts temporarily, and occasionally gets broken by a major game update that drives a traffic spike.

Weird Gloop's hypothesis: Google gave up on identifying SEO slop and decided to nerf all new domains as a blunt instrument. The evidence fits—this behavior didn't exist before March 2024.

Meanwhile, subdomains of established domains are completely unaffected. Every wiki launched on a subdomain since then—like wiki.leagueoflegends.com or overwatch.weirdgloop.org—has gotten indexed normally, even within days of launch.

This changes the calculus for any community fleeing Fandom. Weird Gloop now weighs three options: take the natural root domain and eat the Google penalty, negotiate a subdomain with the game studio (works about half the time), or temporarily squat on a subdomain of an existing domain they control. None are great, but the third has become the pragmatic default.

The plan is to build enough Google equity on the subdomain, then 301-redirect to the proper root domain later, hoping the authority transfers. It's a hack, but it might be the only way out of a penalty that's not officially documented.

Weird Gloop is openly asking for data from anyone else who's seen this pattern—wiki operators, SEO folks, anyone. If you've got evidence, they want to hear it.