How to effectively search the Fediverse?

3 years ago by am0 to c/asklemmy

Hello all. Like many new users, I am a reddit refugee. Please forgive me if this isn’t the best community for my question; I am still learning my way around here.

I am used to google searching “[THING] site:reddit.com” when I want to see the opinions of real people on a topic rather than the flood of clickbait articles you get nowadays with Google.

What is the best way to execute this type of search within the Fediverse rather than Reddit?

grant 3 points 3 years ago

If the instance you’re on is heavily connected with the rest of the network, you should be able to search in your home server to find things youre looking for

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ShittyKopper 2 points 3 years ago

Right now I don't think there's anything of that sort. And I'm not sure if there ever will (or should) be one in the future.

The more Mastodon-y parts of fedi heavily look down on this sort of global search, as microblogging of that sort is generally a lot more personal compared to the community oriented focus of Lemmy/kbin. And it's going to be pretty difficult to handle that in a way that both parts of the fediverse will be happy about, without giving abuse tools to people in the more "channy" corners of fedi.

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fratermus 2 points 3 years ago

I am used to google searching “[THING] site:reddit.com”

Might pick a few good representative instances on lemmy, mastodon, etc, then make a compound search:

site:lemmy.ml OR site:mastodon.social [thing]

then set up a search keyword like fs for it so you could type fs [thing]

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am0 1 point 3 years ago

This sounds reasonable. Hopefully comments are indexed in a way that Google still works. I've never heard of setting up a search keyword like that; looks kind of like a Unix alias. How do you do that?

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fratermus 2 points 3 years ago

I’ve never heard of setting up a search keyword like that; looks kind of like a Unix alias. How do you do that?

Depends on the browser. In FF it's part of a bookmark. In Chrom* it;s under search engines. more info

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