The search features on default lemmy web and app clients are utter dogshit. I sometimes want to see if my question has already been answered elsewhere on lemmy, and I can’t find it (even when i remember seeing multiple versions of the same post before), so I often have to add yet another duplicate post about a common question (this post is likely an example of this too).
I am aware of people saying they see great results with the paid search engine “kagi”. Do you use any other better ways to query the fediverse?
Yeah it sucks, and you cannot get good search results anywhere.
Not that you have many different options anyways…
Lemmy search is only searching for exact text you searched for. There is somewhat useful option to search only post titles.
Piefed search at least has some filters (nsfw, post type, instance software, minimum score…) and search operators (and, or, not…) but it doesn’t have the search only post titles option.
Sometimes searching in google and just appending “lemmy” to your query will give surprisingly good result and sometimes it will return nothing.
Searxng has the search !bang for lemmy posts
!lepo, which gives more or less the same results as lemmys search.