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?

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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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path: 0 69768, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2

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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path: 0 69768 71470, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

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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path: 0 69768 71470 72276, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0