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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.
Can’t emphasize enough how important this is for the growth of Lemmy. Many people I know only access Reddit through google searches.
Yep and I'm one of them. Go look me up on Reddit and I think I have maybe 20 posts over the 14+ years I was on the site. ...joined Lemmy and immediately got frustrated that I couldn't find anything. So I figured I take a crack at it. Especially since I couldn't see how Google would ever be able to link me to my instance. Let alone make it easy to search the entire fediverse without having to write out every possible site, with new ones popping up every day.
Easier to find a Reddit post through Google than by Reddit search.
Please pop a reminder here. Commenting for a bump.
Search their name on GitHub and you'll find it. Star it to follow.
If this guy changes the internet include me in the screenshot.
I’ll invest in seed funding stage. 😂
Interesting. I hadn't even thought about how the fact that instance1.[post] and instance2.[post@instance1] is essentially the same thing and how search engines would handle it. Interested in what you come up with!
Thanks. If you do some digging you can find the project on GitHub but note that it's a work in progress still. The UI is lacking and it's rough around the edges but it's "working". And I still need to do some optimizations on the crawler itself, etc....
It's also going to be completely self-hostable just like Lemmy, etc...
I can see this being helpful
(commenting so I can bookmark)
IDK, isn't it the same for reddit? It also encourages crossposting, so the same content is on there several times. Maybe I don't understand the fediverse well enough yet, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
That sounds awesome. Can't wait to see it.
I am surprised noone mentioned https://fedi-search.com . It's working pretty well. Full credit to Benjamin Pryor for this
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.
You can use a search query to include only results with Lemmy's footer, which is consistent across all Lemmy instances. I made a post about it here: https://lemmy.world/post/342365
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.
It's certainly not going anywhere unless they end up selling it to someone who shuts it down and uses the posts and links as SEO boosting.
Well, Digg.com still exists. It's just that no one cares.
when you just loaded their site to test you just doubled their monthly active users.
I think it is preferable to ask other search engines like DuckDuckGo to index Lemmy info. Google is full of garbage.
Brave Search would be better, they have a dedicated section on the results page for discussions.
Brave is an advertising company and should not be preferred.
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.
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.
I came here to say something similar but you put it nicely.
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?
If Lemmy becomes a source of enough information like Reddit is, search engines will index it. SEO is a marketing thing, and a place like Lemmy doesn't really need that. Google, DDG, etc. all put engineering effort into making sure sites with lots of information are indexed and available in their search results.
Maybe, but probable Google try to kill us
I would argue that eventually, yes, one will be able to google search Lemmy just like Reddit.
Only if we make sure the tech giants don't kill this platform
How would they? It's all decentralized
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.
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
They could join the fediverse, attract a majority of users to their platform by adding attractive features, and then remove themselves from the fediverse effectively killing it
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
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.
Basically use <query> site:lemmy.world OR site:lemmy.ml OR site:beehaw.org OR site:kbin.social (or whatever main instances you want to hit)
You can also use this for custom browser search keys like the following https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+site%3Alemmy.world+OR+site%3Alemmyml+OR+site%3Abeehaw.org+OR+site%3Akbin.social
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.
It’s up to the individual instance owner and Lemmy the software itself enabling SEO. It’s just getting started now so it will be long time before that.
likely not THAT long. I'm sure things are already being crawled
@QuinicV Why would it not be possible? It depends on the software, if all text is open to be indexed. Kbin and Lemmy instances are basically open forum software and are indexed by search engines. You can test it in Google or other engines by forcing to search on the site only with site:lemmy.world are posts indexed? , which would be an empty search result if they were locked down like discord content.
But what if the post I'm searching for is not on lemmy.world? Say the instance doesn't even have Lemmy in their name, like beehaw.org. How would a search engine index it? How would it know it's part of Lemmy?
There will be links to everything somewhere. The same way you knew to get the cave in the same way you know to get to Lemmy. There are already links that have been posted to Reddit that are in archives that are easily followable. Google doesn't just search one or two things they search all the links to the things and then the links from those things to other things. If Google can't figure out how to get to it chances are you don't know it's there either.