Blekko isn’t quite bold enough to take on Google, but the upstart is looking for a thin slice of the search-market pie with a different take on search. Blekko bills itself as a “better way to search the web,” and its secret sauce is defined as the slashtag.
Slashtags search only the sites a user wants to comb and cuts out the so-called “spam sites.” In doing so, Blekko aims to let users slash across the web more quickly than traditional search.
“I haven’t done side-by-side comparisons with Google or Bing to see how it performs on similar queries, but this is a very creative approach that makes search different,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Blekko is exposing a lot of information, including SEO-related data, and its algorithm is fairly open.”
Customized Search
Essentially, Blekko lets users do something Google does not — at least at this level — and that is to customize search results. Users can create a slashtag that includes their favorite sites on any given topic. It can be as narrow or as broad as the user likes. But when the user searches, he or she is only searching those sites. It’s essentially a thin slice of the web.
“If you have particular sites you like for certain things, like health queries or movie blogs, you can create a customized index and you can search only that index,” Sterling explained. “There is also this social dimension where people will be creating these and you can follow people. So there’s a little bit of Twitter feel in there.”
The social dimension comes in when you find a friend’s slashtag and include his or her customized list of search sites in your own. You might search a friend’s sports slashtag for the latest World Series drama, for example.
Realistic Search Expectations
“The…