I got the two best ranked questions in Software Development Codidact and searched their titles verbatim in Google,
1. [Does the location of an import statement affect performance in Python?][1]
2. [How should we share some content between two otherwise-independent git repositories?][2]
I submitted the queries from Tor sessions so as not to stain the results with possible local filtering and to repeat the experiment from some different locations.
Stack Overflow had always the first results, even though there was no perfect match, but that is not what surprised me.
### From Netherlands exit node
1. The first Codidact result (the only one on the first page) was [posts tagged Python][3].
2. The first Codidact results (the only ones on the first page) were [Monica Cellio's activities][4] and, next, [posts tagged version control][5].
### From United States exit node
1. The first Codidact result (the only one on the second page) was [Software Development questions sorted by score][7].
2. The first Codidact result (the only one on the second page) was [Meriton's profile][6].
### From Austria exit node
1. No results on the first three pages.
2. Second and third results on Google, again [Monica Cellio's activities][4] and [posts tagged version control][3].
### What about DuckDuckGo?
No results on the first three pages in any case.
## Discussion
What could be the reasons for Google not to list the questions themselves as results, but instead to list pages that contain links to those questions?
Surely we cannot change Google's sorting algorithm, but is there something at all that can be done at Codidact to improve the chance that the questions are the first Codidact hits? Maybe this is something that will solve itself as Codidact becomes more popular and we should only be patient?
_PS: I made similar experiments with Writing posts, with similar results, namely the questions per se were not the first Codidact hit. With Electrical Engineering, however, I could get a question to be the hit, so it is at least possible._
[1]: https://software.codidact.com/posts/279363
[2]: https://software.codidact.com/posts/277288
[3]: https://software.codidact.com/categories/38/tags/3293
[4]: https://software.codidact.com/users/8046/activity
[5]: https://software.codidact.com/categories/38/tags/4117
[6]: https://software.codidact.com/users/53280
[7]: https://software.codidact.com/?sort=score
