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Comment on Lemmy posts are starting to pop up on search results for Google (+ other search engines)
Lionel@endlesstalk.org 8 months agoI 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.
density@kbin.social 8 months ago
JohnWorks@sh.itjust.works 8 months 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.
amju_wolf@pawb.social 8 months 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 8 months ago
At first I was thinking a GUID might be impossible because of federation, but a simple implementation might be the home instance’s post ID
So something like
Display lemmy.ca/c/cats/123444 for
lemmy.ca/post/123444Display lemmy.world/c/cats@lemmy.ca/1234444 for
lemmy.world/post/98736amju_wolf@pawb.social 7 months 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@lemmings.world [bot] 8 months 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 8 months ago
This bot needs a “that was intentional, delete your comment” option