Can Lemmy posts be indexed by Google or other search engines? - eviltoast

One of the best things about reddit was looking for answers or other users with the same problem as you, and since Google didn’t really help with that anymore and instead insisted on giving you business results, the best practice was to put your search terms in followed by ‘reddit’ and you’d find your answer.

    • Elkaki123@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      Would this be corrected naturally by people using feddit as a search term more or does google have to manually patch this things?

      • EnglishMobster@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It will be corrected over time, I presume automatically. I was one of the first people with a Steam Deck and when I searched for things Google would “helpfully” autocorrect to StreamDeck. But eventually Google figured it out.

    • MinusPi (she/they)@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know about others but I used to just add “reddit” to each of my searches. Wouldn’t adding “Lemmy” instead do the same thing eventually?

        • tqgibtngo@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          As a newcomer, I’ve visited 3 Lemmy sites: Beehaw. Lemmy.world, and a custom instance. I noticed that they each have page footers that contain: Join Lemmy. If the same is true of many Lemmy instances, I can add Lemmy (or, with quotation marks, “Join Lemmy”) in a Google query. — (Note: Top matches might not always be best matches on the originating instance, or sometimes the best matches might be hidden until I click “repeat the search with the omitted results included.” And of course sometimes I won’t get any match because the target hasn’t been indexed by Google.)

        • AntennaRover@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          If it became a common enough thing to search for, Google would correct for that and start ranking Lemmy instances higher, regardless of what’s in the name.

      • albert180@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I guess you would need the name of the instance where the community resides. But usually if you search about specific questions the site with the information will appear (be it reddit or some lemmy instances) without adding it to the search term

        • GammaScorpii@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          The issue is google for the last few years has been prioritising businesses and services with really good SEO. And ads.

          So in order to find helpful user content I always had to add Reddit to the search query.

        • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I don’t understand. I looked at your screenshot again and the search field seems to show feddit.de: Musk. This is not the site: syntax. What I suggested was Musk site:feddit.de. Am I missing something?

          • albert180@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            The site: is feddit.de: and after that follows the search query. It works that way too, and it’s less work to type. Try it out by yourself

            • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              I tried it myself and they’re not similar at all. site: is handled specially through Google’s advanced search syntax while the other approach is no different from a normal keyword. Please refer to the below images with attention to the result counts:

              It’s fine if you don’t want to use the syntax, but using it would solve your problem with keyword autocorrect and properly filter your results to only the website you’ve asked for.

      • Chozo@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I think OP is asking about a broader, Fediverse-scaled search. So using the site: search tag will only search a single Lemmy instance. I don’t think Google will index cross-instance content in those searches, otherwise it’ll end up with a ton of duplicate results. So if what you’re looking for was actually posted to a different instance, it may not be found with that search.

        I’m just theorizing, though, since this is all still really new and untested.

    • yaomtc@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Why are people using a site named after the place they purposefully left with just one letter changed?

      • Moka@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Presumably because reddit itself has a lot of positivity and memories attached to it for a lot of people - it wasn’t the site that people wanted to leave, but rather the ceo and staff behind it.