The Problem
Fandom’s aging codebase, spanning over a decade and more than 385K+ properties, had accumulated substantial technical debt. This legacy infrastructure was increasingly problematic in light of Google’s Core Web Vitals—key metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) that directly influence search rankings and user experience. Beyond performance concerns, the platform also faced growing challenges around regulatory compliance. Large portions of the site were found to be out of alignment with key privacy regulations, including GDPR, CCPA, and COPPA, compounding the urgency for modernization and remediation.
The Solution
A Python-powered analytics program as developed to systematically crawl and audit the Fandom platform. The collected data was funneled into a centralized data lake and enriched with insights from Google Analytics, Lighthouse, and third-party datasets, such as those from Audigent. This analytics pipeline was designed to detect key compliance and performance signals—such as automated cookie deployment on EU-facing properties or default tracking behaviors on COPPA-sensitive content.
Under Kristopher’s leadership, a specialized team of developers and technical analysts was assembled to execute platform-wide remediation. This included both deep technical fixes and strategic realignment with evolving regulatory frameworks, ensuring Fandom’s infrastructure could meet modern performance standards and compliance obligations.
Impact
This effort brought the Fandom platform into compliance with GDPR, CPPA, and COPPA within 90 days. 285K+ sites were fully remediated. Additional tagging operations and revenue identification would result in 2021 revenue growth of nine figures.
Please note that for privacy and data protection purposes, images cannot be shown for this project. Please reach out directly for specific metrics and examples.
