Protests broke Reddit hack for useful Google search results—and Google knows it

BrikoX@vlemmy.net to World News@beehaw.org – 40 points – Protests broke Reddit hack for useful Google search results—and Google knows it
arstechnica.com

cross-posted from: https://vlemmy.net/post/317922

Alternate title: Google admits Reddit protests make it harder to find helpful search results

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The article starts with absolute non-news: To get results on reddit.com you should addd site:reddit.com to your search, not just Reddit.

Unfortunately, I think this is a disadvantage of the Fediverse when it comes to search: The "site:" operator won't work when searching for topics discussed e.g. on Lemmy since there is no common, general domain name.

Maybe that would be a great next step for a search-engine provider to be better: Add a new, flexible operator, like scope, and index the data of the fediverse or other distributed services for search. E.g. DIY Esp8266 camera activator scope:fediverse, scope:lemmy or maybe scope:diaspora

I never bothered with that. All my results were from reddit.com anyway with just appending reddit to the end. Even Bing chat would add reddit to the end of search for you without asking.

he “site:” operator won’t work when searching for topics discussed e.g. on Lemmy since there is no common, general domain name.

Agreed, that's the problem.

Maybe that would be a great next step for a search-engine provider to be better: Add a new, flexible operator, like scope, and index the data of the fediverse or other distributed services for search.

Also agreed, that would be a solution. I'm doubtful wether they deem a particular network important enough to justify the extra effort on their part.

Is it possible to pipe search queries through a website? If yes, then let's make a fedi-search! In which you can find any publicly available fediverse content.

Would it then be possible to google for site:fedi-search?