Blekko, trademarked as blekko (lowercase),[1] was a company that provided a web search engine with the stated goal of providing better search results than those offered by Google Search, with results gathered from a set of 3 billion trusted webpages and excluding such sites as content farms. The company's site, launched to the public on November 1, 2010, used slashtags to provide results for common searches. Blekko also offered a downloadable search bar. It was acquired by IBM in March 2015, and the service was discontinued.
 | |
 Blekko home page | |
Type of site | Search engine |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | IBM (International Business Machines) |
| URL | www |
| Launched | November 1, 2010 |
| Current status | Defunct (March 27, 2015) |
Slashtags
editBlekko used an initiative called slashtags,[1] consisting of a text tag preceded by a "/" slash character, to allow ease of searching and categorise searches. System and pre-defined slashtags allowed users to start searching right away. Users could create slashtags after signup, to perform custom-sorted searches and to reduce spam.[2]
Features
editThe following features were available to all users:
- Search engine optimization statistics. From 2012 subject to payment.[3]
- Linking pages (in and out statistics)
- IP address lookup
- Cached pages
- Tagging of pages
- Finding duplicate content
- Comparing sites
- Crawl statistics
- Page count
- Location of robots.txt
- Cohosted sites
- Page latency
- Page length
Toolbar
editBlekko offered a downloadable browser toolbar or search bar which changes default search and home page URLs of the user's web browsers.[4]
Reception
editIn 2010, John Dvorak described the site as adding "so much weird dimensionality" to search, and recommended it as "the best out-of-the-chute new engine I've seen in the last 10 years".[5] In Matthew Rogers' review of the site, he found it "slow and cumbersome", and stated that he did not understand the necessity or utility for slashtags.[6] In his PCMag.com review, Jeffrey L. Wilson expressed approval of some search results, but criticized the site's social features which "bog down the search experience."[7]
References
edit- ^ a b "About". blekko.com. Archived from the original on November 11, 2010. Retrieved December 18, 2011.
- ^ Miller, Claire Cain. "A New Search Engine, Where Less Is More". The New York Times, October 31, 2010. Accessed October 31, 2010.
- ^ Keays, Roger (August 14, 2012). "Blekko Paywall Their /SEO Secrets". SunburntSEO.com. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
- ^ Watson, Cheralyn (January 12, 2012). "How do I remove blekko as my homepage and default search engine in Internet Explorer (IE)?". help.blekko.com. Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. Retrieved April 10, 2012.
- ^ Dvorak, John C. "Blekko: The Newest Search Engine", PC Magazine, November 1, 2010. Accessed November 1, 2010.
- ^ Rogers, Matthew (November 1, 2010). "Blekko, the "Slashtag" search engine is slow, cumbersome, and just plain broken". DownloadSquad.switched.com.
- ^ Wilson, Jeffrey L. (November 3, 2010). "Blekko". PCMag.com.