PDA

View Full Version : Have you tired Blekko search yet?



vangogh
11-02-2010, 12:57 AM
Today the new Blekko search engine was released to the public. They're taking a somewhat different view of search in an effort to compete with Google and many SEOs who were using Blekko as part of the public beta think they have some very good ideas.

You can watch this short video to see what Blekko is all about (http://blekko.com/ws/+/press-videos?h=1).

One of their big ideas is what they call slash tags. You can add them to the end of your query to further refine results. You'll see this in the video, but here's how you might search global warming

global warming - this would be the normal search
global warming /date - this would be a date slash tag and would sort results baed on date
global warming /green - this would be a green slash tag and would sort results to see only green sites
global warming /conservative - this would be a conservative slash tag and would sort results to see only sites with a conservative slant

They have some pre-made slash tags you can use and if you log in you can create your own. There's a social aspect in that people can share their slash tags with friends.

Another nice feature is a spam link below results. If you think a site is spam you can click the link and never see that site in your results again.

One nice feature and the main reason SEOs are excited is they also have an seo link below each result which will show you all sorts of data about the result so you can understand why it ranks where it does. They're being very open with how they rank pages, which is a great thing.

I haven't played with it much yet, but it looks nice so far. I think it may become very useful if you spend time creating slash tags for yourself and I'm looking forward to analyzing the seo data.

vangogh
11-02-2010, 01:01 PM
Thought I'd add a link to an interview with Rick Skrenta (http://www.seobook.com/interview-rich-skrenta), the founder of Blekko.

Harold Mansfield
11-02-2010, 01:26 PM
Another nice feature is a spam link below results. If you think a site is spam you can click the link and never see that site in your results again.
.

I like that!

Business Attorney
11-02-2010, 04:53 PM
I like that!

Me, too. I know that you can report spam sites to Google (and probably Bing), but when you are in the middle of searching for something, it is too distracting to have to stop and notify the search engine.

vangogh
11-02-2010, 05:55 PM
I think that'll be a nice feature too. I don't even think it has to spam. Pretend you don't like content from Wikipedia for some reason and would rather not see it in any search results. You can click the link and never see it again. I get the feeling that's going to be how people end up using. It might have been better to give it another name or have two links one for remove and one for spam and it would probably be a good idea to allow people to reinstate those sites somehow if they click the link by accident or change their mind.

Overall Blekko looks interesting. Once people begin creating slash tags and Blekko can learn from those and the spam link I think the results will improve. At the moment they seem ok. I've been using them on and off since last night. Sometimes the results were fine. Sometimes I switched back to Bing or Google.

seolman
11-03-2010, 12:10 AM
I like this a lot. You can see a very interesting algorithm that seems to lean toward domain authority first then digs deeper.

vangogh
11-03-2010, 12:28 PM
It is interesting isn't it? I've been using it on and off. For some queries the results seem pretty good. For others they aren't so great. I'm mostly interested to see what the results look like in a few months and see if and how they've improved.

seolman
11-03-2010, 01:42 PM
ok...i'm officially addicted to the Blekko info...I love the link data!

vangogh
11-03-2010, 05:59 PM
it is pretty cool isn't it. Being open about their algorithm is a big part of the starting strategy. It makes sense since it likely means more SEOs and other tech savvy types are going to give Blekko a try. It was similar people who talked up Google early on.