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a lot of lemmy instances block google indexing purposefully. you would need to search using the instance search capabilities.
Kagi or some other search engine has a “search the fediverse” option now I think. Pretty sure I saw a post a few days ago
Has had it for a while now, yeah.
Yep, it's a subscription i'm happy to pay for
That seems rather counterproductive imo. The only way to get useful results on any search engine is to input "reddit" at the end of your search ime. So it seems like it's limiting the discovery and knowledge base of things here by not allowing for the same thing for Lemmy. Idk how to word that correctly.
More so the only way to get results that aren't ad-filled webpages that are paid to be top Google results is to search for reddit posts. Unfortunately a lot of the newer reddit stuff seems to be regurgitated bot accounts reposting stuff, so most useful stuff on Reddit is from before the enshittification.
a lot of lemmy instances block google indexing purposefully
Hopefully I'm not opening a can of worms by asking this, but, why?
To be more precise, why not let any search engine index? It seems like it'll grow Lemmy if people can use its data to search through.
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Try kagi search! It actually has a “lense” or search option that lets you directly search federated services like lemmy: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html
You can add "site:[whatever.tld]" to a Google search to restrict results to the specified domain. But as mentioned elsewhere many instances block indexing.
Conversely, you can add -site:Reddit.com and exclude Reddit results altogether.
That way you can search one instance but not the fediverse
Reddit has a decade long corpus of valuable knowledge from millions of individuals... Lemmy just doesn't have that scale or earned trust yet.
Yeah I don't browse Reddit anymore, but I still Google it for BIFL products and such. Lemmy just doesn't have the content for those use cases.
You should definitely post in a relevant community to help build the proverbial field of dreams!
Don't use Google, use Startpage.com instead, and add "lemmy" to your search terms.
I currently don't do that (can not replace the treasure trove in reddit yet) but you can edit default search engine url and add something like
site:lemmy.world/ site:lemmy.ml/ site:lemm.ee/ site:sh.itjust.works/ site:lemmy.dbzer0.com/ site:lemmy.ca/ site:programming.dev/ site:lemmy.blahaj.zone/ site:discuss.tchncs.de/ site:spouli.xyz/
and make a seperate search engine shortcut for this. But as others have said, google is not great for this.
If you use searxng, then you can also include instance searches in default results . There is a seperate social media page(just like you have image or video tab), enable lemmy and mastodon stuff and use that.
There was a Lemmy search engine but I don't think it is up any more.
Stract has a Fediverse "optic" but it doesn't appear to be working.
Probably if you tell Google to search site:lemmy.world that is likely to be good enough.
-site:reddit.com should exclude results from that site.
That makes me wonder if the fediverse is disadvantaged by SEO. Each instance is likely "just" a domain to search engines.
Just change "reddit" for the Lemmy instance of your choice and it is functionally the same.
Maybe not helpful, but Kagi search includes an option to search forums, which includes Lemmy. They have or had a dedicated Lemmy search, but I don't see it on my end right now.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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