This has more to do with how bad Google has gotten, such that you’re forced to add restrictions like Reddit to get rid of SEO sites and get useful answers. A proper working search engine would show these (and any that are found in Lemmy) high up by default.
Comment on On the future of Lemmy vs reddit
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
One problem I see:
You can google site:reddit.com whatever
But if you google site:lemmy.world whatever then you’re losing a significant amount of results. To get good results, you need to know which Lemmy instances is likely to have your answer, and with communities duplicated over different servers, that can be tough.
In the end I find I prefer this federation model, although I’m not sure although I’m a bit concerned about funding it if it scales up to the size of Reddit (same with Mastodon vs twitter).
adeoxymus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
astral_avocado@programming.dev 1 year ago
Welcome to the old Internet. Decentralization is good in a way, people will have to try harder instead of having everything spoon fed to them by Google.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I’m not personally a fan of that brand of elitist gatekeeping. Having it be harder to keep out the plebs is not a look I think we wanna get behind.
Decentralization is important, but the goal isn’t to keep people out.
astral_avocado@programming.dev 1 year ago
I guess I didn’t exactly mean it as elitist gatekeeping, I see it more like people are being abandoned by major websites and this is the result.
o_oli@lemmy.world 1 year ago
People having to work harder is good? No I disagree with that entirely.
Part of what makes reddit so amazing is the amount of amazing knowledge and answers you can find from google.
o_oli@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m sure the search problem will be solved somehow. Like all the content is on each instance so its just a case of it being accessible and indexed by google I guess?
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I’m sure it’s already being indexed by Google. But people like to add site filters like
site:Reddit.comorsite:stackoverflow.comto prevent google from barfing up a bunch of garbage results on the front page, when they know that’s probably where the results they want will be. There is no way to add a Lemmy-wide filter to a Google search, because Lemmy instances are all different sites
Astongt615@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Ideally it would be popular enough that you wouldn’t need the site modifier. Google would see that Lemmy has the most seen and perpetuated answer just like it sometimes does with Reddit now, whatever the instance.
new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In the eyes of a search engine, yes.
But once a site is popular enough for traffic and engagement to influence it’s position in search, it’s def going to be popular enough for bots, trolls, bad faith actors, grifters, etc.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
People still often out the site modifier on just to prevent google from barfing up a bunch of crap they don’t care about, even if they know that Reddit results will be near the top.
zephyreks@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Google should be finding searches with “lemmy” keyword, but it isn’t at the moment.
Lemmy needs some SEO people.
new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t think lack of SEO is the issue. There’s just not enough content and brand/domain authority to get results from here high in SERPS.
There might be something fediverse related that would affect performance in search, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about this setup to speak to it
I think it’s just lack of content, general awareness/interest, and longevity that’s keeping Lemmy low in search