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Lemmy posts are starting to pop up on search results with Google (+ other search engines) (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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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:

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[-] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 131 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.world 52 points 1 year 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.

[-] Lionel@endlesstalk.org 21 points 1 year ago

I wonder if there’s a way around this that we can create, instead of doing nothing or hoping google adapts.

Like a dummy instance that catalogues everything on all instances (but also links to the original posts) for the purpose of showing up on google search.

Since this instance isn’t for posting but for search engine indexing, there may be some otherwise undesirable micro-optimizations that can help improve its chances of showing up.

[-] amju_wolf@pawb.social 15 points 1 year ago

Yes, this would be possible (and not too hard technically either). But all instances would have to agree to link this instance as canonical.

You'd also want to add a feature where you can set you home instance where this canonical instance would redirect you (perhaps even automatically). Home Assistant does something like that.

What pisses me most about Lemmy is that each instance has its own post IDs which means that crosslinking and switching instances based purely on URLs is impossible.

IMO posts should have random GUIDs for IDs; that would help a ton with these kinds of issues. It'd then be trivial for Google to detect same content (if they wish) this way

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At first I was thinking a GUID might be impossible because of federation, but a simple implementation might be to use the post ID from instance the community lives on

So something like

Display https://lemmy.ca/c/cats/123444 for lemmy.ca/post/123444
Display https://lemmy.world/c/cats@lemmy.ca/1234444 for lemmy.world/post/98736

[-] amju_wolf@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

The point of random GUIDs is that there are so many that it's effectively impossible to generate duplicates just by random chance. They'd be perfect for this.

The initial instance picks it, and then the federated instances use it.

[-] CommunityLinkFixer -3 points 1 year ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !cats@lemmy.ca, !cats@lemmy.ca/1234444

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

This bot needs a "that was intentional, delete your comment" option

[-] density@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

bit.ly for lemmy

[-] JohnWorks@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Would another option be like having every post have some kind of anchor of invisible text or something with "lemmy" so when I search for "best washing machine lemmy" it'll show all posts across instances or something. Idk if that's how SEO works entirely though.

[-] Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com 9 points 1 year ago

Each post refers to the poster's home domain as the canonical URL, regardless of which instance you're viewing it on specifically to avoid duplication SEO concerns

[-] Vub@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I didn’t know that and never bothered to look. But then you still have the (SEO) issue of all the domains vs one in the case of Reddit or Quora or Stack Overflow. But yeah, a few very large Lemmy instances will probably start to rank well once they have enough good content.

[-] amju_wolf@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

Didn't know that's the case, that's neat though it doesn't solve the redirect back to your home instance.

It'll also probably lead to centralization because if you're more likely to find a particular instance through search and decide to join Lemmy you're probably going to do so on that instance.