August 03, 2010
Blekko – Slashing Your Way Through the World Wide Web
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know about search engine behemoths Google and Yahoo, and by now you’ve likely even heard of Bing, the “decision engine”. But one name you probably haven’t heard before is Blekko. Blekko is the newest contender in the search engine market and was recently launched in private beta.
Perhaps the biggest differentiating factor between Blekko and the recent barrage of would-be competitors is that Blekko has not set its sights on overthrowing Google to capture search engine market share majority. Rather, they are content to be number three…someday. According to founder Rich Skrenta, formerly of news community site Topix, his goal was to create a search engine that allows users to perform regular searches just like on any other engine, but also to take it up a notch and allow users to do types of searches not available anywhere else. This is achieved with a feature called “slashtags” which allow users to refine results by viewpoints or verticals. There are currently over 250 slashtags including “/green”, “/humor”, “/health”, “/maps”, “/blogs” and “/news”. But the slashing doesn’t stop there, users can also create custom slashtags and even note sites to exclude from the results they are provided.
In addition to this unique query refinement tool, Blekko is also committed to transparency in search engine results ranking. Unlike Google, whose ranking algorithm is shrouded in a cloak of secrecy, Blekko allows users to explore multiple factors affecting rank to gain insight into the data that is being indexed and how it stacks up against the competition. Although in the future users may be given the ability to build tools based on their data, Blekko’s current goal is simply “to be open in how it works”, according to Skrenta. In fact, “ranking data shall not be kept secret” is among Blekko’s founding principles.
Will Blekko succeed? That remains to be seen. For more information or an invite to join the private beta testing group, visit www.blekko.com.
