I play Wuthering Waves. I got tired of bouncing between 5 different wikis to check character stats, weapon comparisons, and echo sets. So I built my own: WutZone (https://wutzone.com/) — 172 static pages, one 20KB CSS file, deployed on Cloudflare Pages.
The site itself took about two weeks. Getting Google to index it? Three months of pain.
Here's what went wrong, what fixed it, and what I'd do differently.
The Stack: Deliberately Boring
Plain HTML, one shared CSS file, vanilla JavaScript for the interactive bits (build planner, map, tier list filters). No React, no Next.js, no build step. Wrangler pushes to Cloudflare Pages on git push.
Why no framework? I wasn't building an app. It's a database. 172 mostly-static pages where the "dynamic" part is a couple of JSON fetches for character comparisons. A framework would have been overhead with zero upside.
The one thing I didn't skip: structured data. Every page has JSON-LD — FAQPage on the guide, BreadcrumbList on character pages, Article on news. If Google's going to show rich results, I want my pages in them.
Mistake #1: noindex on Half My Pages
Two weeks after deploying, Google Search Console showed 0 indexed pages. I checked robots.txt — fine. Checked canonical tags — fine. Checked page content — fine.
Turns out 49 out of 57 character pages had baked into the template from an early draft. I'd set it while testing, forgot, and shipped.
One grep fixed it. Six weeks of wondering why Google ignored my site, solved in 3 seconds.
Lesson: grep -rl "noindex" . belongs in every pre-launch checklist.
Mistake #2: Allow: / in robots.txt
After removing noindex, GSC still showed the homepage blocked by robots.txt. The file looked innocent:
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /build-planner/editor.html
Allow: / is redundant. But Google's parser had cached an older interpretation where this combo caused confusion. And when Google thinks your homepage is blocked, it doesn't trust the rest of the site either.
Removed one line. That was the fix.
Lesson: robots.txt should be boring. Every extra line is a chance for a parser to get confused.
Mistake #3: The Google Sandbox
Even after fixing both issues, GSC showed tively removed from the index:
- July 12: 3 pages indexed
- July 15: 2 pages
- July 17: 1 page
- July 19: zero
No manual actions. No security issues. Just a new domain in the gaming niche being treated with extreme
suspicion.
What helped: manually submitting core URLstion in GSC, getting the first externallinks from Reddit and Medium.
What didn't help: refreshing GSC 40 times a day.
What Actually Worked
Structured data everywhere. JSON-LD on eveage from ~65% to ~97%. It signals "this is a real site, not a scraper."
IndexNow API. Bing indexes new URLs within hours. And Bing feeds DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT, and Copilot. One API call
after each deploy.
External links, even nofollow ones. A singingWavesGuide brought more crawler activityin 24 hours than the previous two weeks combined.
Content that doesn't look templated. Pure data pages are thin. Unique write-ups — F2P pull breakdown, echo
farming guide, character comparisons — gavndexing.
What I'd Do Differently
- GSC verification on day zero. Register domain, submit sitemap, verify robots.txt before writing any code.
- Ship with 5 pillar pages that aren't tens, news — anything with 500+ words ofunique text.
- Get external links before asking Google beats 20 manual GSC submissions.
- grep noindex as a launch step. Next to checking canonicals, mobile layout, and sitemap. Cheapest thing that can ruin everything.
Not a startup. Not a SaaS. Just a game wiki that I wanted to exist. Turns out the hard part isn't building it — it's convincing Google it deserves to be seen.
Check it out at wutzone.com (https://wutzone.com/). Happy to answer questions in the comments — especially about Cloudflare Pages quirks, structured data gotchas, or why you probably don't need a framework for a 200-page site.
- │ ├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Months at 0 indexing │ 3 │ ├──────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Schema types │ 5 (WebSite, FAQPae, Organization) │ └──────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Not a startup. Not a SaaS. Just a game wikTurns out the hard part isn't building it —it's convincing Google it deserves to be seen.
Check it out at wutzone.com (https://wutzone.com/). Happy to answer questions in the comments — especially about
Cloudflare Pages quirks, structured data gy don't need a framework for a 200-pagesite.
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