I haven't used Google in a while, DuckDuckGo indexes them okay, SearX too

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.