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Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

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11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#11
post #7

I was surprised to finally see my own blog showing up in the results when I googl-, err, searched for my own name. But then I searched for "name /blog" and my blog disappeared. It did however show an irrelevant GitHub page with a pull request I once submitted. So it seems to work for rough searches but refining needs some... Refining. I won't be making the switch today.

Assuming you mean elbertf.com, I filed a bug. We did recognize it as a WordPress blog, but for some reason the front page is getting a poor rank with /blog and is OK without it. BTW, you can send bug reports like this to support@blekko.com.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#16
post #2

what's blekko? "all the anti-google sentiment" is nonsense. it's not really anti-google. people get emotional about products and companies they care about. the people who whine about every little change google makes are the same ones who whine about every little change facebook makes: the biggest fans of those products.

No its rather apt in my opinion. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020462420... "Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers." Oh hello whats this? Google execs knowingly assisting illegal operations peddling illicit drugs from manufac…

I agree with the sentiment, but "Google execs knowingly assisting illegal operations peddling illicit drugs from manufactures unknown?"

I think it's more like Google knowingly helping people bypass the pharmaceutical equivalent of DVD Region-coding.

The drugs people were buying were the same stuff you guys get down there in the states, they were just available for cheaper because Canadians pay less for drugs. It's also my understanding that Canada has stricter regulations on drug safety than the US, so your portrayal seems a bit FUD-y.

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacy#Internet_pharmacy)

"Canada is home to dozens of licensed internet pharmacies, many of which sell their lower-cost prescription drugs to U.S. consumers, who pay one of the world's highest drug prices.[11] In recent years, many consumers in the US and in other countries with high drug costs, have turned to licensed internet pharmacies in India, Israel and the UK, which often have even lower prices than in Canada. In the United States, there has been a push to legalize importation of medications from Canada and other countries, in order to reduce consumer costs. While in most cases importation of prescription medications violates Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations and federal laws, enforcement is generally targeted at international drug suppliers, rather than consumers. There is no known case of any U.S. citizens buying Canadian drugs for personal use with a prescription, who has ever been charged by authorities."

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#17

I tried to use it months ago while I found Google was slow here. But Blekko's Chinese search results are quite bad.

We're concentrating on the US and English for now. A startup can only do so much, so fast.

Using it from Japan I had some issues as well. Even in English it's not quite global yet. I guess Blekko might be good to see what's going on in the US market...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#18
I tried Blekko for a bit this past fall and was not terribly impressed. I, frankly, don't understand what the /slash notation is doing. is it a filter? Is it a specific type of search?

However, I have been using DuckDuckGo almost exclusively for the past 2 months and I'm not sure that I'll be going back anytime soon. DDG is touted as being for the privacy conscious, but I can't say that was my primary motivation in switching. I have been increasingly unhappy with Google's 'bubbling' and my searches there increasingly felt like I was running in circles through crappy mailing list archives and spam sites and all their new 'features.'

DDG brought back memories of what drew me to Google in the first place, over a decade ago. It is clean, straightforward, and relevant. Yeah, I know it's running on Yahoo Search APIs which are running on Bing, but it's still a drastically different search experience.

Finally, doing a bit of research into DDGs extras and the !bang notation pages kind of sealed the deal for me. Want to know your IP address? just search "ip" Want lorem ipsum text, just search for that. Want to search the python documentation? Just use !python. Want to re-run your last search in Google? Just add !g Those features alone are enough to make it a true power user's search engine.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#19
Funny you asked. I signed up couple of days ago, deciding that slash tags should be the best way to get rid of all the crap in google's search results. I was a little confused though. Does Blekko expect me to choose which slash tag I want to use for my query? If that is the case, I think it will be hard for them to go mainstream. I can do it, no problem. But an average user will not be able to. I was expecting some sort of an intelligent algorithm which would decide which slash tags to use with my query. I think it all should be seamless to the user. They should curate the slash tags themselves and apply them to the search queries when relevant.

They've been around for a while. So I think it is fair to expect more powerful features from them. Color me worried. It would be a shame if they don't get more momentum. I think their idea of slash tags is a killer one. I just think they have not implemented enough or going to the wrong direction.

To sum up: 1) slash tags are just brilliant. 2) slash tags should be seamless to the user and be applied by Blekko automatically to each search query. 3) They should build their own slash tags, not relying on crows sourced ones. They should go crazy about this. Doesn't seem like they are. 4) More power to them. I love them

Re: Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

#20
post #2

what's blekko? "all the anti-google sentiment" is nonsense. it's not really anti-google. people get emotional about products and companies they care about. the people who whine about every little change google makes are the same ones who whine about every little change facebook makes: the biggest fans of those products.

No its rather apt in my opinion. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020462420... "Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers." Oh hello whats this? Google execs knowingly assisting illegal operations peddling illicit drugs from manufac…

The term "illicit drugs" is a little disingenuous. Google wasn't posting ads for heroine. They were posting ads for pharmacies that sold Claritin a few dollars cheaper than US sellers.
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