a lot of lemmy instances block google indexing purposefully. you would need to search using the instance search capabilities.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
290 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
30991 readers
2865 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
a lot of lemmy instances block google indexing purposefully
Hopefully I'm not opening a can of worms by asking this, but, why?
To be more precise, why not let any search engine index? It seems like it'll grow Lemmy if people can use its data to search through.
~This~ ~comment~ ~is~ ~licensed~ ~under~ ~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~
load more comments
(11 replies)
That seems rather counterproductive imo. The only way to get useful results on any search engine is to input "reddit" at the end of your search ime. So it seems like it's limiting the discovery and knowledge base of things here by not allowing for the same thing for Lemmy. Idk how to word that correctly.
More so the only way to get results that aren't ad-filled webpages that are paid to be top Google results is to search for reddit posts. Unfortunately a lot of the newer reddit stuff seems to be regurgitated bot accounts reposting stuff, so most useful stuff on Reddit is from before the enshittification.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Try kagi search! It actually has a “lense” or search option that lets you directly search federated services like lemmy: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html
How do you "try" Kagi without subscribing or creating an account? Is that possible?
I think you get a hundred free searches, then it's about 13 EUR per month for unlimited searches. I'd recommend Startpage, it's free and European.
Whoa, that's expensive for me. That's half of my internet bill just for a search engine. Lol
You can add "site:[whatever.tld]" to a Google search to restrict results to the specified domain. But as mentioned elsewhere many instances block indexing.
Conversely, you can add -site:Reddit.com and exclude Reddit results altogether.
That way you can search one instance but not the fediverse
Maybe not helpful, but Kagi search includes an option to search forums, which includes Lemmy. They have or had a dedicated Lemmy search, but I don't see it on my end right now.
This is definitely helpful. I hadn't noticed it. Kagi keeps on giving. Thank you!
It's still there for me, called Fediverse Forums. It's a lens you can disable or reorder so maybe you did and forgot about it? It's also different to Forums lens which doesn't seem to include Fediverse for some reason.
Add this at the end of your search query to omit results from Reddit:
-site:https://www.reddit.com/
To specifically include results from Lemmy, you can just add a plus sign and replace the site name:
+site:https://lemmy.world/
Believe it or not Lemmy.world is not the only instance.
Yeah I'm new to Lemmy and still getting used to the whole instance thing. Apparently you can use "related:" to include results that are similar. In the below example, I did a Google search for "ukraine related:lemmy -site:reddit.com".
I'm guessing that search would turn up results for any instance LW is federated with? If not that would be disappointing!
Just as a FYI:
You don’t need the + to include things on Google. Anything you type that isn’t prefaced with a minus symbol already means “include this”. Also, using quotes means you want an exact match.
Additionally, you could shorten to this:
Search keywords here -site:Reddit.com site:lemmy.world “exact match keywords, if you want”
And just for funsies—you can use related: as an operator to find sites that are similar to something.
You don’t need the + to include things on Google.
Yeah I don't know why I added that. Kinda dumb on my part.
And just for funsies—you can use related: as an operator to find sites that are similar to something.
I think this is what OP was really looking for. I did a Google search for "ukraine related:lemmy -site:reddit.com" and got this, which seems to be the kind of results OP is looking for:
load more comments
(2 replies)
Reddit has a decade long corpus of valuable knowledge from millions of individuals... Lemmy just doesn't have that scale or earned trust yet.
Yeah I don't browse Reddit anymore, but I still Google it for BIFL products and such. Lemmy just doesn't have the content for those use cases.
You should definitely post in a relevant community to help build the proverbial field of dreams!
SearXNG also shows lemmy results in the social tab.
Why not just open your Lemmy app of choice and click search?
I currently don't do that (can not replace the treasure trove in reddit yet) but you can edit default search engine url and add something like
site:lemmy.world/ site:lemmy.ml/ site:lemm.ee/ site:sh.itjust.works/ site:lemmy.dbzer0.com/ site:lemmy.ca/ site:programming.dev/ site:lemmy.blahaj.zone/ site:discuss.tchncs.de/ site:spouli.xyz/
and make a seperate search engine shortcut for this. But as others have said, google is not great for this.
If you use searxng, then you can also include instance searches in default results . There is a seperate social media page(just like you have image or video tab), enable lemmy and mastodon stuff and use that.
Don't use Google, use Startpage.com instead, and add "lemmy" to your search terms.
There was a Lemmy search engine but I don't think it is up any more.
Stract has a Fediverse "optic" but it doesn't appear to be working.
Probably if you tell Google to search site:lemmy.world that is likely to be good enough.
That makes me wonder if the fediverse is disadvantaged by SEO. Each instance is likely "just" a domain to search engines.
Just change "reddit" for the Lemmy instance of your choice and it is functionally the same.
-site:reddit.com should exclude results from that site.
Then you will find only the shitty articles
I want to whitelist Lemmy, not blacklist Reddit
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›