Why YSK: Searching topcs on reddit was simple matter of entering desired term and prepending or appending keyword reddit. With lemmy’s decentralised structure finding particular topic without knowing to which, or rather if even there is community dealing with such topic(s) can be a headache inducing hurdle. So appending simple:

site: lemmy.*

site:lemmy.*

to Your google search feature can ease up search.

P.S.

to avoid certain domains You can use e.g.:

-site: beehaw.org

-site:beehaw.org

@edit: removed spaces thank You @[email protected]

  • readbeanicecream@kbin.social
    391·
    2 years ago

    Duckduckgo has a bang for Mastodon: !msocial. Maybe we should start putting in requests for Fediverse bangs: !lemmy, !kbin, !beehaw, etc.

    It would be better if they would add !fediverse that searches all of the sites. Maybe one day!

      • readbeanicecream@kbin.social
        6·
        2 years ago

        looks like it. !msocial {{{string}} points to https://mastodon.social/tags/string. So, !msocial Cats searches https://mastodon.social/tags/Cats.

    • Unblended@kbin.social
      5·
      2 years ago

      Very cool, I didn’t know they added !msocial.

      Seems it only searches tags, which seems appropriate for Mastodon.

      I feel like there is a huge difference in expectations of discoverability with this UI versus Mastodon, which makes full text search a non-question here whereas on Mastodon it was a (often ill-informed but well-intentioned) argument about privacy.

      On Mastodon you can opt-in to have your posts indexed by Google, hopefully kbin/lemmy can rely on DDG or Google to do the full-text search for us with a flag on robots…?

      • readbeanicecream@kbin.social
        5·
        2 years ago

        I just requested a !kbin bang. In the request form they ask for a search URL such as https://kbin.social/search?q={{{s}}}. I tested it and it worked on kbin. I am thinking that the more people request these bangs the more likely they get approved.

        • Unblended@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          I’ll try submitting the same, sure.

          I am suspicious that the search URL will only be indexing kbin.social and not the greater kbin/lemmy universe which is not good. But it’s a !kbin bang and the !msocial bang goes to mastodon.social so I guess it makes sense.

          I’d much rather see a !kbin search that returned results from all kbin instances it has indexed, and a !lemmy search that does the same for lemmy instances, or a !fediforum search that returned results from both. But it’s a start!

    • FlowerTree@pawb.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      If you use firefox, you can use extensions to add any lemmy instances as a search engine options. Then, simply add an @ shortcut to the lemmy search engine options, and you’ll have the ddg equivalent of bangs in your firefox search bar.

      Firefox does allow you to change search engine straight from the search bar by typing @ shortcut. An example of this by default, typing @ddg on firefox makes you search with duckduckgo instead of your default search engine.

      Keep in mind that you have to type the shortcut on the searchbar first, before typing anything else.

    • Wander@yiffit.netEnglish
      43·
      2 years ago

      There’s a silver lining here. It will prompt people to search from their instance instead of giving more traffic to Google.

  • bdonvrAEnglish
    22·
    2 years ago

    Not all lemmy sites fit that though. You’ve already lost out on sh.itjust.works, beehaw, lem.ee, sopuli.xyz etc

    • coupland@kbin.social
      114·
      2 years ago

      OP is sharing a very useful tip for people new to the Fediverse. Let’s not allow our pedantry to get in the way of what is still a helpful tip please.

      • onion_dude@kbin.social
        8·
        2 years ago

        Fwiw I don’t think they were complaining. I found it useful to clarify that it’s not a complete search.

        I frequently append “Reddit” to searches for more informative results. I can imagine that in the future it would be great do perform simalr searches covering all of the fediverse

      • bdonvrA
        3·
        2 years ago

        I don’t see how my comment “gets in the way” of using it. Just something to be aware of.

    • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      Someperson shall createth a copypasta of these terms of search that shall be needed to search on ALL of the kingdom of lemmy and associates. Until then let us pray that answered questions and questioned answers shall not disappear in the never ending greatness that is lemmy, as information shall be needed as needed shall be information!

      • koorool@feddit.de
        5·
        2 years ago

        Every browser supports adding custom search engines to the list. So you can prepare a query with all terms to be added and save it as a search engine. Fediverse search based on Google/Bing

        • DampCanary@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          2 years ago

          Hmm, thank You for nice idea, maybe python(or JXS)+selenium+https://browse.feddit.de+https://programmablesearchengine.google.com could give me what I need,

          I should look in to that, tnx

  • Jessica@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    YSK: This doesn’t work in DuckDuckGo because I just independently had the idea to try this a few days ago and returned no results. I didn’t think to try on Google. I believe DuckDuckGo is running on Microsoft Bing so it likely doesn’t work there either

    • jrubal1462@vlemmy.netEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Finding answers about Lemmy is an easy, 3 step process:

      1. Enter search query, followed by Lemmy
      2. Exasperated sigh, because apparently I haven’t learned my lesson
      3. Enter search query followed by “Lemmy -motorhead”
  • Briskfall@kbin.social
    4·
    2 years ago

    I’ve had better results searching through the instances themselves because Google doesn’t always index the keywords on time. On caveat of this method is that if the instance doesn’t have the syncing out the instance where the info is from being propagated, then this trick would not work

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      Yes and no. It won’t search kbin.social directly, but federation works via mirroring content, so any posts that have reached the site being searched will, well, be on the site being searched.

  • Runel0rd@kbin.social
    31·
    2 years ago

    If I’m searching for something I will always use “quotes” to make sure I get a direct search for that term. Anything else is a waste of time

  • RotaryKeyboard@lemmy.ninjaEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    So this is a good idea in principle, but there are a lot of sites that don’t follow the “lemmy.tld” format. I checked the list of instances connected to our site, lemmy.ninja. We’ve been up for a few days, so we’ve accumulated a lot of instances by now. Following the Lemmy.* format gave me 285 out of 585 of our current instances. So just under 50%.

  • foo@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    You can also search for text that is present on most Lemmy pages and in URLs like:

    “Join Lemmy” inurl:post