Blekko is a search company founded by Rich Skrenta and his core team from previous company Topix and Netscape’s Open Directory. It is a search engine that slashes out spam, content farms, and malware. They do this using a tool called a slashtag that organizes websites around specific topics and improves search results for those topics.A slashtag is an easy-to-create custom search engine. It is a tool used to filter search results and helps you to search only high quality sites, without spam or content farms. Slashtags contain a list of websites and when you search with a slashtag, you only search those sites.
Blekko, has a feature named “3 Engine Monte: Choose the best results”, is a new feature that directly compares results from Google, Bing and Blekko for any given search query. The separate search engine results are presented in three columns and asked the users to choose which they think is the most useful. Before they make a selection, the results are not branded with any of three engines, and the engine behind each possible search result is revealed only after users make their choice based on the content provided. At that Blekko also shows which of the websites in other engines’ results are banned from its search because of notoriously poor site quality/content spam.
Here, in the above screenshot we performed a search using the query “ how to guide” and the results are displayed with respective search engines. Compare the results and find the difference.
Bonus Tip
Blekko has created hundreds of slashtags that are being curated by experts across the web. You can search with these slashtags or you can create your own. If you need more help to Blekko’s slashtag, then go to Blekko help.
