A great use for reddit is the ability to search posts and opinions about any niche topic. Will that be possible with Lemmy as it grows? Will I be able to Google “instant rice Lemmy” and get a comprehensive tier list of each brand?

I imagine search engines will have trouble with all the different instances(?). EDIT: Especially with instances that don’t have Lemmy in their name, I don’t think search engines would return them for Lemmy searches?

  • marsara9@lemmy.world
    96·
    1 年前

    So I’ve been working on a solution for this.

    As I see it Google and others are going to have a hard if not impossible time to incorporate the fediverse, and the fact that the same content can exist on multiple servers.

    So I’m working on a search engine specifically build, for Lemmy at least. Where it’ll take you to whatever your preferred instance is when tapping on a search result.

    I hope to have a MVP up and running in a few more days.

    • PierreKanazawa@fedia.io
      1·
      1 年前

      Tried it, pretty cool, though seems still depend on search engines’ indexing. The instance that I’m on seems not indexed.

      Also it’s interesting it uses intext to identify whether the results are from fediverse.

  • OsakaWilson@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 年前

    Digg.com was the big thing with Reddit trailing. Digg began tweaking the experience toward a more profitable model. I had already come to Reddit when they went too far and there was a sudden enormous migration from Digg to Reddit. Digg went from being THE social media aggregator to being nothing in a matter of weeks.

    Reddit is more deeply rooted, so I think it will stick around, I’m cool if Reddit keeps those who are happy with corporate model busy so we can do our thing here.

  • krigo666@lemmy.world
    92·
    1 年前

    I think it is preferable to ask other search engines like DuckDuckGo to index Lemmy info. Google is full of garbage.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 年前

    Depends on Google. These tech companies don’t like new platforms, especially those competing with established ones like Reddit. You’ll see that Google often discriminates against Lemmy or Mastodon.

  • static@kbin.social
    4·
    1 年前

    Reddit did not start out as the thing to google, it’s 15+ years old, only in the last 5y I started prefixing my google searches with reddit.

    • BrerChicken @lemmy.world
      6·
      1 年前

      I actually found Reddit by googling things. I had seen it 5 or 6 times over a few years, and eventually I just went to the main site. I might have even used Reddit in the search before I joined. Regardless, I had recognized that all the best answers for tricky problems that I had were coming from Reddit before I even joined 11 years ago.

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 年前

      Everyone’s experience on this will be different, but I personally started using reddit about 12 years or so ago largely because at that point a lot of my Google searches were already pointing me towards reddit. I wasn’t necessarily going to google specifically to find reddit results, but since that’s where I kept ending up i figured I might as well go straight to reddit. And since reddit’s search function is and has always been trash, i pretty much immediately started using Google to search reddit.

    • QuinicV@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 年前

      I realize Lemmy needs to get much bigger for that to happen. My question was more directed at how search engines would handle the fediverse. Though I see now that that wasn’t very clear.

        • balls_expert@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          1 年前

          Like xmpp

          Make a giant instance, get all the content there by pumping users and making cool shit, slowly customize your instance and extend the protocol with features so that ours become incompatible in annoying ways

          Add wikis, overhaul user profiles, achievements, posting to your own profile, games, whatever, then get tired of supporting the fediverse interface and shut off the API

          You instantly can’t read 95% of your subscribed /f/s

        • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 年前

          Google could prevent lemmy pages from showing up in the results for example.

          Or they could adapt the protocol, make their own slightly tweaked version of it and let it die, which apparently often also kills the original protocol due to newly introduced compatibility issues, etc.

          Not sure about the second part, I read about it here somewhere where they mentioned an example of that happening as well but I can’t find it anymore.

    • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 年前

      I wish there was a way to get an entire Reddit archive over here. Realistically I’m still going to have to search Reddit because it has 10+ years of answers to obscure questions.

    • QuinicV@lemmy.worldOP
      21·
      1 年前

      I imagine that would be quite inconvenient… Especially as Lemmy grows and has potentially many more instances.

      • subtext@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 年前

        I believe that DDG has a shorthand for site:Reddit (without the .com). If lemmy gets popular enough DDG may implement a similar shorthand that incorporates the fediverse without us having to use a massive string. Like if it gets big enough, we may not have to solve this problem because others will see the value in making it easy.

        That’s my hope at least.

  • RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world
    52·
    1 年前

    Respectfully: Fuck that.

    If you want to find the best instant rice recommendations on Lemmy, Lemmy should have a functional post search function, rather than me relying on a malevolent corporate entity like google to index all the content.

    Search has gone to shit as the Internet has embraced social media sites, an upside of this is that wikipedia+Lemmy+key word search, mayas accurate as asking Google Bard or bing, and they can be built on entirety open tech.

    • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 年前

      Cool rage but you dismissing search indexing is kinda hilarious. It’s not going away and it’s what makes the web. Would you rather have 3 big websites instead of indexed web?

      • RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world
        01·
        1 年前

        Would you rather have 3 big websites instead of indexed web?

        That’s what we already have, I’d you need to find stuff by doing site specific googles, both google & that site have failed.

        The web is dead, it’s been dead for a while, now is the time to build something new in it’s wake that rather than depending on closed source algorithms, indexing 3 big websites, we could just search the 3 big websites directly.

        • PlexSheep@feddit.de
          1·
          1 年前

          I disagree. I’m not sure why you say that. I Google stuff as a job and it’s certainly not just the big 3 websites. I personally rely on selfhosted searxng.

  • Ben@lemmy.world
    41·
    1 年前

    Ok, not a stupid question - but annoying to assume that only Google is relevant.

    Also, annoying that you’ll assume that searching ‘instant rice’ will pull results from Lemmy. Even searching Lemmy for ‘instant rice’ brings zero results.

    • Instant rice simply had all of the good parts milled out If you really are interested, I’d skip it entirely - ‘instant’ rice is basically rice that got everything milled out of it, then it’s cooked, then dried - it costs a lot more and tastes like shit.

    So I hope my answer will come up in your next search…

    However, searching for ‘sending epub files to my kindle’ brings up quite a few… and down the list there, we see posts from 2022 in r/kindle, and entering reddit as an extra keyword pulls up more…

    So really, we want to know if we search for something which should have results in Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.world - and not only Lemmy, there are others - like BeeHaw) how long is it going to take before this gets picked up by SEARCH ENGINES (Let’s not say Google, or Reddit - these are bad habits unless there’s a specific need to specify).> instant rice

    • hardypart@feddit.de
      4·
      1 年前

      but annoying to assume that only Google is relevant.

      Google’s market share is around 92%. Of course it’s the most relevant thing. Other search engines don’t exist for 10% of the users.

      • Ben@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 年前

        You know that Google and Reddit own the internet - so just go there, and make sure you’re using a Chromium based browser because that’s the market share too.

        That way, you can work to create a Fediverse whilst Google and friends succeed in closing all the loops to take total control of your internet and browser.

        Other people will say they ‘search’.

        Part of the marketing strategy is to make Microsoft, Google, Reddit etc the default.

        Why reinforce it?

        The issue is becoming accessible to Search.

        Not specifically to become accessible to Google.

        Here’s one example of something I found OUTSIDE the fediverse via search.

        I use SearXNG, but I remember that one came via Qwant search and NOT via Google.

        Language IS very important here, and it’s important to avoid always using ‘default’ branded options which are not and should never be considered the default.

  • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
    52·
    1 年前

    In the future they eventually might be, for some instances. Though definitely not for all of them, since some of the instances might disable indexing.

    I’ve actually already seen a few Lemmy results (lemmy.ml) in Google searches, the trouble is it doesn’t link to individual posts, just the community so it’s not particularly useful. So it definitely is possible, just needs to be improved to be able to index posts.

  • hunte@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 年前

    It’s a difficult problem but not principly impossible. One potentially good thing about Meta being involved is that if the user base is there, I’m pretty sure Google with their resources and other big tech backing will find a way and incorporate it into their engine.