Blekko
Encyclopedia
Blekko is a web search engine
whose goal is to provide better search results than those offered by Google Search
, by offering results culled from a set of 3 billion trusted websites and excluding material from such sites as content farm
s. The site, launched to the public on November 1, 2010, uses slashtag
s to provide results for common searches.
in 2007, who had created Newhoo, which was ultimately acquired by Netscape
and renamed as the Open Directory Project
. Blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital
from such individuals as Netscape founder Marc Andreessen
and Ron Conway
, as well as from U.S. Venture Partners
and CMEA Capital
. The company's goal was to be able to provide useful search results without the extraneous links often provided by Google. Individuals who enter searches for such frequently searched categories as cars, finance, health and hotels will receive results prescreened by Blekko editors who will use what The New York Times
described as "Wikipedia
-style policing" to weed out pages created by content farms and focus on results from professionals. Use of slashtags will restrict the set of search results to those matching the specified characteristic and a slashtag will be automatically added for search categories with prescreened results. Queries related to personal health are limited to a prescreened list of 76 sites that Blekko editors have determined to be trustworthy, excluding many sites that rank highly in Google searches. As of Blekko's launch date, its 8,000 beta editors had developed 3,000 slashtags corresponding to the site's most frequent searches. The company hopes to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 most frequent search targets. Additional tools built into Blekko allow users to see the IP address that a website is running on and let registered users label a site as spam.
Blekko plans to earn revenue by selling ads based on slashtags and search results. Blekko plans to provide data on its algorithm for ranking search results, including details for inbound links to specific sites.
The following "web search bill of rights" was publicized by Blekko: "search shall be open", "search results shall involve people", "ranking data shall not be kept secret", "web data shall be readily available", "there is no one-size-fits-all for search", "advanced search shall be accessible", "search engine tools shall be open to all", "search and community go hand-in-hand", "spam does not belong in search results", "privacy of searchers shall not be violated". One writer referred to it as "what we assume is a poke at Google."
In 2011, Blekko announced blocking "content farmy sites", to reduce spam, in line with its bill of rights.
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".
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
whose goal is to provide better search results than those offered by Google Search
Google search
Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....
, by offering results culled from a set of 3 billion trusted websites and excluding material from such sites as content farm
Content farm
In the context of the World Wide Web, the term content farm is used to describe a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines...
s. The site, launched to the public on November 1, 2010, uses slashtag
Slashtag
Slashtags are a set of short community-created conventions for attributing information on Twitter, also called microsyntax. They are designed to be succinct and provide an easy way to provide metadata about a tweet, especially when "retweeting".-History:...
s to provide results for common searches.
History
The company was co-founded by Rich SkrentaRich Skrenta
Richard "Rich" Skrenta is a computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created the search engine blekko....
in 2007, who had created Newhoo, which was ultimately acquired by Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
and renamed as the Open Directory Project
Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...
. Blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
from such individuals as Netscape founder Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, software engineer, and multi-millionaire best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard...
and Ron Conway
Ron Conway
Ron Conway is an American angel investor, often described as one of the "super angels". Conway is recognized as a strong networker and is based in Silicon Valley.-Early career:...
, as well as from U.S. Venture Partners
U.S. Venture Partners
U.S. Venture Partners , is a venture capital investment firm headquartered on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley focusing on investments in an array of segments including semiconductors, software as a service, communications, storage, wireless, Internet 2.0, Cleantech, Medical devices and...
and CMEA Capital
CMEA Capital
CMEA Capital is a venture capital firm located in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded by Tom Baruch with New Enterprises Associates in 1989 as a $40M fund entitled “Chemical and Materials Enterprise Associates”. CMEA’s early focus was on investing in startup enterprises that...
. The company's goal was to be able to provide useful search results without the extraneous links often provided by Google. Individuals who enter searches for such frequently searched categories as cars, finance, health and hotels will receive results prescreened by Blekko editors who will use what The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described as "Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
-style policing" to weed out pages created by content farms and focus on results from professionals. Use of slashtags will restrict the set of search results to those matching the specified characteristic and a slashtag will be automatically added for search categories with prescreened results. Queries related to personal health are limited to a prescreened list of 76 sites that Blekko editors have determined to be trustworthy, excluding many sites that rank highly in Google searches. As of Blekko's launch date, its 8,000 beta editors had developed 3,000 slashtags corresponding to the site's most frequent searches. The company hopes to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 most frequent search targets. Additional tools built into Blekko allow users to see the IP address that a website is running on and let registered users label a site as spam.
Blekko plans to earn revenue by selling ads based on slashtags and search results. Blekko plans to provide data on its algorithm for ranking search results, including details for inbound links to specific sites.
The following "web search bill of rights" was publicized by Blekko: "search shall be open", "search results shall involve people", "ranking data shall not be kept secret", "web data shall be readily available", "there is no one-size-fits-all for search", "advanced search shall be accessible", "search engine tools shall be open to all", "search and community go hand-in-hand", "spam does not belong in search results", "privacy of searchers shall not be violated". One writer referred to it as "what we assume is a poke at Google."
In 2011, Blekko announced blocking "content farmy sites", to reduce spam, in line with its bill of rights.
Slashtags
Blekko uses an initiative called slashtags, consisting of a text tag preceded by a "/" slash character, to allow ease of searching and categorise searches. System and pre-defined slashtags allow users to start searching right away. Users can create slashtags after signup, to perform custom sorted searches and to reduce spam.Features
The following features are available to all users:- Search engine optimizationSearch engine optimizationSearch engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
statistics - Linking pages (in and out statistics)
- IP address lookup
- Cached pages
- Tagging of pages
- Creating and searching /slashtags
- Finding duplicate content
- Comparing sites
- Crawl statistics
- Page count
- Robots.txt location
- Cohosted sites
- Page latency
- Page length
Reception
In 2010, John DvorakJohn C. Dvorak
John C. Dvorak is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a mainstay of a variety of magazines. Dvorak is also the Vice-President of Mevio and well known for his work for Tech TV...
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".