To see the original discussion, you can see this thread: https://lemmy.ca/post/8488573

To open the post on your instance you can go to !lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world and see the recent top posts, or use an app/frontend/ browser extension (ex. !instance_assistant@lemmy.ca)

Alternatively, here is the screenshot from the post.

I also wanted to share this tip for how you can filter for Lemmy posts when searching:

  • Search using site:home_instance. So if I wanted to find recommended phones, I could go site:lemmy.ca recommended phones. Since every instance has its own collection of posts, you will be getting results from all over Lemmy. The limitation is that you won’t see content from instances that aren’t federated with yours, but you probably didn’t want to see that stuff anyway since you picked your instance for a reason. You can also put any instance into the search if you wanted different results.

Question to everyone, what does Lemmy need to make it easier for people to find content? What are the implications of the Fediverse on how people might find content in the future?

One thing is that people are more likely to get posts from the larger instances, likely because more people are linking to them and opening those links? Another thought was the common complaint about how our post links aren’t community specific. While I can search for posts using the method above, I can’t search within a specific community like I can with Reddit (ex. I can’t search site:lemmy.ca/c/Vancouver recommended restaurants

EDIT: The issues for it are here, looks like the devs are good with it now and someone just needs to implement it:

  • @phoneymouse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    107•2 years ago

    Reddit is talking about hiding Reddit from Google. I hope they do that because it will let Lemmy start to replace Reddit as the go to source for non-SEO, real-human answers.

    • @Vub@lemmy.worldEnglish
      47•2 years ago

      Except each instance has its own URL meaning ranking for ANYTHING is extremely hard since each domain’s rank will always be weak in the sea of others. Each is even being penalised by the algorithm if there are duplicate content mirrored between different URLs. It’s the weakness of the fediverse if we are to follow how search engines have worked in the last decades. Maybe it will lead to new search engines (I hope so) but right now it is not going to work well to replace for example Reddit … or rank well in general at all.

    • @emhl@feddit.deEnglish
      12•2 years ago

      If the Fediverse gets big enough search engines wil probably optimize for it e.g. prioritizing the instance of the community…

    • NickNakEnglish
      -1•2 years ago

      One of the main reasons reddit mega turned to shit was due to far too many people joining and using it, granted this is due to mobile phones but is it really worth it to attract more and more people? These instances are run by average people not corps with money they can easily collapse under tuw burden of to many

        • NickNakEnglish
          0•2 years ago

          It’s really not, when it’s been proven time and time again that more people doing something ruin that something it should become obvious that lots and lots of people is a detriment

          The reddit front page is a classic example of that, the general state of the internet proves it too, beaches/music festivles are both great examples too

          That’s not even thinking about the cost of everything and corporate meddling either

          • @jackalope@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4•2 years ago

            It is so fascinating to me there are people out there who really mistake their own subjective experiences as iron objective truths. Just a complete lack of self awareness. It’s like how babies lack object permanence.

            Its been proven? Really. Do tell.

          • density
            1•2 years ago

            Yes like all the people using rice for food has totslly ruined rice

            Dont even get me started on indoor plumbing. Was so much better before it got popular.

      • @TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7•2 years ago

        The cool thing about the fediverse is that if grows to much where and the moderation turns to crap on some instances, you can always defederate from those problem instances and avoid the trouble makers entirely. Instance admins can always turn off sign ups when they feel like they have reached their limits for moderation as well. And users can always self host their own instances and only let the people they trust sign up. The fediverse is more resilient than traditional corporate run social media

        • NickNakEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          Moderation is not the issue, the sheer cost to host the tremendous amount of data is very likely to be a reason an instance goes down, thats what I’m getting at

  • BabyWahEnglish
    53•2 years ago

    I use duckduckgo and lately have been adding Lemmy at the beginning (like I did Reddit) and it really works. Search results come back if there is a discussion going on about the topic.

    • Chozo
      12•2 years ago

      I’ve not tinkered around with it too much yet, but how has your experience been with actually viewing the results? I would imagine that most results are statically likely to be for an instance other than the one you have an account on, requiring a few extra steps to load the post in your home instance if you wanted to vote/comment on it.

      This is one of those UX things that I think is still holding Lemmy back from more mainstream adoption, imo.

      • BabyWahEnglish
        6•2 years ago

        It’s hit and miss most of the time. I just tried Lemmy memes and it redirects to lemmy.ml and the memes community.

        Then I tried Lemmy how do I wash my kitten and there was an answer. Again for Lemmy ml. I think it depends on whether there is a post answering the question and if people commented on it.

      • breakfastmtnEnglish
        5•2 years ago

        You can make that a bit less painful with browser extensions. ‘Instance Assistant for Lemmy & kbin’, for example, will always show a button to open a page in your home server. Not sure if there’s anything exactly like it here yet but FediAct for Mastodon lets you like/boost/follow/comment on other servers directly, more or less eliminating the other-servers problem.

  • yukichigai
    49•2 years ago

    Swag. The more we show up in search, the more people will be asking “what the heck is Lemmy?” Some of 'em will join.

    Well then. Here. We. Go.

    • kratoz29English
      18•2 years ago

      I have been regularly sharing shit with friends that I see in Lemmy, and they always said to me why my links always have weird names and domains and shit… so I proceed to explain and we get to nowhere.

      Anyway this is people that weren’t even into Reddit, so that people are the harder to get, IMHO.

  • @Habahnow@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6•2 years ago

    That’s cool. I seem to have issues finding this post, or the top post of the day (https://sh.itjust.works/post/8365139) by searching: site:sh.itjust.works After watching the 2nd episode of 11th season of Futurama And I’m not getting the correct result. Am I doing it right, but there’s something else affecting the results (top of day for lemmy isn’t as popular as needed to show up on google, bing, nor DDG)? or am I making a mistake somewhere?

    • OtterOPEnglish
      5•2 years ago

      I don’t think the instance is the issue like the other comment is suggesting (although I don’t quite understand the specifics of how it works). I’m playing around with it myself right now

      If I search site:sh.itjust.works Hello and set it to 24 hours, I do see posts. So timing should be ok too

      Update: So I think what’s happening is that the post needs to go through a few stages when it’s on a different instance

      1. Someone posts on a foreign instance (https://foreign.example.com/post/123444
      2. Someone on your instance views the post, which generates a link on your instance for that post (ex. https://example.com/post/135799)
      3. Google indexes your home instance and grabs that post

      So we’re probably between steps 2 and 3 right now?

    • OtterOPEnglish
      3•2 years ago

      Looks like it’s appearing now! Just needed some time I guess

  • @lemmyingly@lemm.eeEnglish
    5•2 years ago

    One big issue that Lemmy has because it’s a distributed service is the dilution of results.

    For example, there is only one Reddit domain (that people use to access the service) but there are hundreds/thousands of Lemmy domains and the dilution will continue to increase as Lemmy’s popularity increases. It’s either that or there will only be a couple of Lemmy instances that will dominate all of Lemmy.

  • @Daft_ish@lemmy.worldEnglish
    -7•2 years ago

    Honestly, I’d rather it not. Just accelerates the social media platform life cycle. Any other search engine. Google, no thanks.

    • OtterOPEnglish
      9•2 years ago

      I don’t see how a site can choose which search engine it appears on

      Also this feels like the elitist “I don’t want the NORMIES on my site, only I know what’s best”

      • @Daft_ish@lemmy.worldEnglish
        -3•2 years ago

        I don’t know. How about the millions of sites that don’t appear in a Google search. Do what they did.

        • OtterOPEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          Which would make it so it doesn’t appear in any search, which is also what Reddit is considering doing

          Now THAT would be speedrunning the enshittification. Just DRM Lemmy