Hopefully this kind of content is ok here. Up until recently, when I would be searching for some kind of technical info, the top (and best) results would usually all be Reddit posts. I was very pleasantly surprised to do that this time and find a Lemmy post instead!

…It did happen to be a post from me, so unfortunately didn’t answer my question at all, but I still thought it was really neat and wanted to share. Has anyone else seen Lemmy stuff getting indexed and turning up in their search results?

  • t0fr@lemmy.caEnglish
    191·
    1 year ago

    Pretty cool to start seeing Lemmy posts in search results

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caEnglish
      831·
      1 year ago

      Gotta keep this up! So much of my google results are Reddit forum posts

      • Einar@lemm.eeEnglish
        201·
        1 year ago

        So many Reddit posts are removed and useless. And often these posts used to be the main answer. I don’t bother much with Redditt anymore. It’s not the knowledgebase it used to be. Will likely never be again.

        Some questions I “reask” here on Lemmy and get decent replies. Thus building a new knowledgebase.

        • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          That’s exactly what all of us should do. Thank you for being proactive. We need more of you.

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      This could be a big help to growing the overall threadiverse community since growth after the reddit bump has stalled. Not saying growth is intrinsically the goal, but rather that organic rather than force growth (which is how we got most of the users here) is preferable

    • neutron@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Hope the indexed instances don’t get taken down years down the road, or have some sort of independent archive to consult later.

      • AdmiralShat@programming.devEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        That’s my biggest worry, however I’ve been programming for like 15 years now and there are forums I posted to that no longer exist, so I think its just a symptom of information as a whole.

        Reddit was the bastion for this kind if stuff for a long time, and now there are a bunch of posts by this guy named [deleted] that have no post body so make of that what you will

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.oneEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      I honestly think Programming.dev is very well positioned to become a “programming reddit” of sorts. Nice polished sounding domain name, and a discussion platform visually similar to Discourse but with the grunt of the fediverse behind it.

      The only thing holding it back is probably a setting for showing local communities by default, when logged out browsing. Whenever that feature arrives in Lemmy then 👌

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      71·
      1 year ago

      While true, I just tried in an incognito window and the post was #5

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          1 year ago

          I know, I know. I nearly added a disclaimer. Point is I’m not OP and I’ve never searched for that kind of thing. At most they know I like lemmy.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
    40·
    1 year ago

    I’ve noticed Lemmy appearing more in search results already. It’s nice

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      33·
      1 year ago

      Funnily enough my own instance has a such a bad SEO that when I searched up my username (to find out what is out there) I found all other instances my comments got copied to but not my own freaking instance.

      Oh well. Yes Google does index instances but how well and often is another story.

        • CoderKat@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          But why? Part of why reddit became so useful was its ability to use it for searching. Even though I no longer visit reddit regularly anymore, I still use site:reddit.com on many of my google searches because it gets better results for opinion or explanation based topics. Similarly, I found tons of useful local info from my local city’s subreddit. I can’t say the same about the Lemmy community, which I only see if I explicitly remember to go to it because the sorting doesn’t show small instances.

          • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            I… don’t know. Performance? Doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s all federated.

            You can do site: lemmy.world and find lemmy.ca posts since they’re federated.

          • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Don’t forget to nest your callback a few levels deep, that way it’s easier to use.

      • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        I honestly don’t think Google crawlers knows how to index the fediverse but I am kind of talking out of my ass rn.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Fediverse is just another website. It literally finds my username on many other instances posts got replicated to.

    • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago

      So I thought the biggest issue with Lemmy and Google’s pagerank is that federated content looks a lot like that blogspam that just aggregates content from elsewhere.

      Perhaps they’re adapting things

  • eckte@lemmy.worldEnglish
    343·
    1 year ago

    ‘Googling something’, as he enters the most specific question ever.

    • Nelots@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      I get it. Finding the answers to super niche questions is just about the only thing I still go to reddit for.

    • UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      1 year ago

      It’s not just reddit. They’re AI assisted buttons with more tabs for commons searches. Many people add “reddit” after a search to find answers specifically on reddit. It’s also catered differently per user so you might see TikTok or Quora as other buttons up top as well.

      Google search results will also slightly vary among users.

  • keeyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    232·
    1 year ago

    there was this movie I liked a lot that I found hard to find people to discuss it with. I talked to a couple people about it on reddit one time, but that was really the extent of the discussions. Eventually I saw the movie again on TV and it got me wondering if there was anymore more info about it, like theories or whatever. So I Google it and come across this thread that looked interesting, and as I’m reading through I thought that this person knows what they’re talking about and has some good ideas. Eventually I realize it was my own comments I was looking at from before, I just didn’t recognize them at first. I’m actually retarded

  • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    I’ve noticed that the quality of the questions and answers on technical topics has gotten noticeably worse since July. Not surprising these types of users would move away from Lemmy first. On the Ubuntu subreddit I’ve noticed a relative increase in confidently incorrect answers.

    • CaptKoala@lemmy.mlEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      If it weren’t bad for everyone overall, I would support intentionally giving wrong solutions on Reddit. As it is, I simply only go there now for the pre-lemmy knowledge as many do, though as Lemmy starts getting a deeper knowledge base I expect that will slowly change, I find the quality of both the questions and answers on Lemmy to be much greater nine times out of ten.

    • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.socialEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      Ya, it still has a backlog of great answers to questions from the past, but hopefully as new questions are asked and new issues are brought up, Lemmy can grow that backlog as well.

  • moondog [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    One time I was looking up a question related to obsidian MD, only to find out there was a post about my exact issue, I open it, I’ve already upvoted it. I read closer, it’s my own post from 6mo ago.