Yes, sorry, there was some serious lagg in fetching posts from Lemmy World that persisted for several days and accumulated a 1-week delay.
But after upgrading Mander it is now fetching data from LW quite rapidly and it should be back in-sync in about a day and a half from now.
If you are curious about the ranking algorithm, there is some info here: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
You can take a lot of control by using search commands. Here is a list of commands for Google, for example: https://www.lifewire.com/advanced-google-search-3482174
By using commands like these you can narrow down your searches to the point that the impact of SEO is small. You give a much greater weight to the conditions that you have chosen.
It can be a bit of work to write a good search query, but the database that search engines search through is massive, so it makes sense that it would take some work to do this right.
Search engines like google aggregate data from multiple sites. I may want to download a datasheet for an electronic component, find an answer to a technical question, find a language learning course site, or look for museums in my area.
Usually I make specific searches with very specific conditions, so I tend to get few and relevant results. I think search engines have their place.
Well, good thing that you prepared well in advance and have already built a nice alternative.
Reddit is done
I find it satisfying to see the graph come down :)