Contrary to what some people think, there is a search engine world outside of Google. And, on the first of November, another contender has joined the fray: Blekko.
The newest search engine on the block has been described as the offspring of an imaginary union between Google and Wikipedia. There is no such union (at this point), but Blekko exists in beta version, and it seems to hold a lot of promise.
The idea behind Blekko is that users are given the responsibility of tagging web pages (through the use of slashtags) that are indexed by the search engine. According to the founders, this makes the search engine results more relevant as humans weed out the unnecessary or irrelevant results which computer algorithms come up with. Other advantages that Blekko offers:
- Designed to weed out spam
- Does not include results from content farms
- Will offer better results as more and more pages are tagged by users
Of course, the search engine also has features similar to what Google has, such as the ability to apply filters to one’s searches.
Blekko did not come out of nowhere, even if this might be the first time you are hearing about it. It is the brainchild of Rich Skrenta, who has been working on the search engine since 2007. He is also known for being the driving force behind the Open Directory Project. Blekko has caught the attention of venture capitalists and has received $24 million in funding from various sources (e.g., U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Capital, and Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame).
Watch the video below to find out more about Blekko from Skrenta himself.
blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.
That was a pretty convincing demo, although I am not sure if the average search engine user will take to slashtags. What do you think? Will Blekko be a serious player in the world of search engines?