I haven't used Google in a while, DuckDuckGo indexes them okay, SearX too
Fedigrow
To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks
Kagi has a built in Fediverse lens (filter). Works well IME.
As far as Reddit goes, recently there have been articles about SEO shenanigans
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-reddit-is-taking-over-google-right-now-2024-4
There was a guide a while back about searching for Lemmy posts, and it involved using the search operators to pick out a few large instances
I am quite happy to have a Google search phrase that brings up one of my posts: weaselverse darkest timeline. It's niche but still...
My understanding is that Lemmy's cross-posting between instances makes Google think they are just a "farm" of sites harvesting clicks and ad revenue. That will really impact their ranking or even if they get indexed at all.
I hope it's only a matter of time before Google adjust their algorithms to take account of the Fediverse but I am not holding my breath. I have pondered how to improve Lemmy's SEO but I am drawing a blank.
Based on a quick look, from the best to worse: DuckDuckGo > Google > Quant > Bing
Unless search engines decide to integrate a dedicated filter to Fediverse, it will always be hard to search even if it's indexed. Cross posts, quote posts are not search engine friendly features.
Welcome here!
I heard Kagi has a specific Fediverse lens that can be used. Hopefully other will follow
This is an old post, but I've only recently (I'd say a few months ago) started to see Google's indexing bots pop-up in my instance's server logs, so this may be about to change
Thanks for sharing!