Three pitfalls I’ve observed among people who talk about Indian history:
Wikipedia University. “Wikipedia University” should be seen as just as cringe as relying on “WhatsApp University”. Wikipedia has its own ugly and cliquey politics under the hood (plus some projects activists demand be emphasized like “Women in Red” and “WikiProject Africa”), and navigating its social politics is a nuisance to anyone seeking to actually understand truths. Even by design, it can only reflect mainstream academic consensus at best, and mainstream Indology today is just not very competent. See Indian history: myths and overcorrections.
Not knowing where to find signal amongst the noise. Not knowing what the actually good sources are on Indian history (it’s neither Irfan Habib nor some schizo Swarajya writer, but competent folks mostly from before the 1970s, like RC Majumdar), or reliable repositories of primary source full texts and archaeological artefacts. See Primary sources.
Not knowing what Indian history was actually centered around. Politics didn’t center around kings and dynasties, religion did not center around the currently popular pantheon, science and technology were obviously not modern-tier, national unity didn’t occupy the minds of those not threatened by insecurities, and philosophy didn’t center around feminism or environmentalism or whatever 21st century American leftists care about.
If you’re going around searching for a Shiva temple, or (a favourite) “king’s palace”, in 5th century BC artefacts, or for depictions of homosexuality in the Dharmasutras, then, well, you might find something, but emphasizing it won’t be very helpful in understanding the history of the period.
Perhaps relatedly, it helps to have a comparative context so you don’t run around trying to explain things that aren’t even notable on a global context, e.g. the whole discourse around historical foreign invasions of India (ironically, such insularism is one of the few weaknesses truly unique to Indian civilization). See Features and contradictions of Hindu civilization.