this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

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That feeling when you're googling the answer to some technical question, and your own Lemmy post appears 4 results down. (lemmy.one)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Pretty cool to start seeing Lemmy posts in search results

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At least now I'm starting to see those results as "Fuck /u/Spezz This post removed by "

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Take that, Stack Overflow! Programming.dev on deck!!!! Let's gooooooo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 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 👌

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey, does that mean we're finally googleable? That's pretty cool.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My guess is it'll vary instance by instance. You have to get on Google's radar to start search your content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Time to start injecting my posts with SEO nonsense

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Reddit programming funny Google lemmy search results...

Don't mind me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know it's a unique question when lemmy is on the front page.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Google: I don't know, ask these nerds.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh did Google start indexing lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe google downranks db0 instance like it does other pirate sites?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some instances disabled crawling, namely lemmy.ca

[–] [email protected] 2 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

So you know those buttons at the top of Google search results?

Images, News, Videos, etc?

You'll never guess what new button they're testing out now.

https://imgur.com/a/bnOv1W7

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lemmception