What is the best instance for searching on Lemmy?

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ChasingEnigma@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

Content discovery on Lemmy depends on the number of users. So between the 10 instances with most users which is the one that defederates with and is defederated by the least amount of instances so that most of the content is available for search?

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Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you’re willing to pay for Kagi, it has started indexing “fediverse forums” and their lens is getting to be pretty good. I’m seeing content posted yesterday showing up.

search-lemmy.com was once good, but it’s been timing out for me lately. Hopefully it comes back.

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- Marsupial@quokk.au ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is there a way to stop that? Don’t really want to give the Kagi arsehole anything.
  
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originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
keep in mind federation does mean 'all content is mirrored' between the instances. it just means subscriptions can be made.

its plausible there are communities on the most popular sites you wont see because those sites are not subscribed to that content (yet), even if not de-federated.

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- ChasingEnigma@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The number of users is directly proportional to the amount of content subscribed to.
  
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  - originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    ha, no its not. you could absolutely have a number of users with identical subscriptions which would not increment content pulled.
    
    no
    
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  - mo_ztt@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    He’s just trying to help you, dude. lemmy.world is by far the biggest instance; 3x the users of the next biggest instance and much more than most. But, lemmy.world is also defederated from some notable instances like beehaw and hexbear. Another instance which also has in the tens of thousands of users (enough to be subscribed to “most stuff”) might well give you better search results.
    
    You may decide that the defederated-from-here instances aren’t worth bothering with, with some justification, but you came in asking for help, he’s trying to help you, and you’re lecturing him about what’s what. 🙄
    
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mo_ztt@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Lemmy.world has by far the most number of users. OTOH, it’s defederated from some notable instances, so you might be better off using one of the dedicated search sites if you want to cast the widest net.

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