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Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

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

#21

Post by msbarnett »

TheBurningOr wrote: post #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 s…

Slashtags are a way to build specific search domains. The easiest way to understand one is to build one for yourself.

Example: I built myself a /objc slashtag that includes Apple's docs, Stackoverflow, Cocoadev.com, Mike Ash's blog, and a few other sources.

Now, when I go to blekko and search, say, "calendars /objc", I get only info about calendars in objective-c from those sources, and no noise.

Edit: I find this rather more useful than DDGs ! Syntax in that it's user-extensible, and lets me aggregate many site searches into one slashtag, rather than just punting me to a specific site's engine.

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

#22

Post by greglindahl »

TheBurningOr wrote: post #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 s…

Some slashtags are filters. Other ones are a specific type of search. DDG uses ! in a somewhat similar fashion to /; for example, on blekko, adding /google does your search on google. Adding /python does your search on a list of 136 important Python websites. And you can volunteer to help edit the /python slashtag.

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

#23

Post by greglindahl »

yalimkgerger wrote: post #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 s…

Have you tried blekko? We suggest slashtags as you type, we suggest more slashtags after you've searched, and we often automatically add slashtags to your search if you didn't specify one. Most of the /blekko slashtags (the most visible) ones are build by a combination of our in-house content team, and subject-matter experts -- the /health slashtag has an outside editor who's a medical librarian at a major teaching hospital.

Great suggestions! :-)

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

#24

Post by greglindahl »

zaknanny wrote: post #14

What are Blekko's thoughts on 'do no evil'? If they get popular, would they fall into the same trap that Google has, or would they stay pure?

You can check out our privacy policy and prefs -- we let you opt out of all ads, out of facebook integration, etc etc, so that we don't collect info about people who don't want it collected.

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

#25

Post by greglindahl »

Intermediate wrote: post #13

I tried to use blekko, but I found their search results not very relevant. However I using them from time to time just to show my support and to check if there is any improvement in search relevance.

Our last big step up in relevance was launched on December 15, have you tried us since?

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

#26

Post by somestuff »

kennywinker wrote: post #16
somestuff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

When medication does not go through legit supply channels you cannot trust the product, accountability is gone. Trusting illicit pharma spammers to source legit medication is laughable.

Edit: Not laughable, horrific and sad.

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

#27

Post by somestuff »

dbecker wrote: post #20
somestuff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently you have a hard time reading since I posted the link to the story I am refering to along with the quote in the comment you replied to that is totally contrary to what you stated. So here we go for a second time:

"By the end of the operation in mid-2009, agents were buying Google ads for sites purportedly selling such prescription-only narcotics as oxycodone and hydrocodone. Agents also got Google's sales office in China to approve a site selling Prozac and Valium to U.S. customers without a prescription."

Google wasn't posting ads for 'heroine' alright, they were posting ads for what they thought were suppliers of opiates who were selling without prescription. Illicit pharma opiates are in the same catagory as illicit black market opiates or, heroin as its called. If you cared to actually read before responding you would know that this was all included in the article.

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

#28

Post by dmoy »

TheBurningOr wrote: post #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 s…

Just to be devil's advocate here, everything you list seems to be easy to do using any web browser (since we're talking about power users here):

>Want to know your IP address? just search "ip"

https://www.google.com/search?q=ip

--> Your public IP address is 123.456.789.>256? - Learn more

>Want lorem ipsum text, just search for that

Ok that's pretty cool.

>Want to search the python documentation

For me this is a language other than python, but I have queries in chrome/opera that search by keyword. C++ is cstuff, java is j stuff. As an added benefit, for any internal documentation I can have keywords going directly to internal stuff.

>Want to re-run your last search in Google

Ditto with bing b, amazon a, etc.

As a 'power user' my needs go way beyond what any search engine does. Web browser, scripts, etc pick up the slack.

Also, am I missing something here? Everyone keeps mentioning that DDG runs off of Bing. Do they do anything in the interim to your queries, or do you get the same results by going to bing.com? And if so, is everyone just arguing that bing's results are better than Google's now? (Could be, I dunno).

It is kinda cool that you get wolfram results, etc (wherever they pulled lorem ipsum from for example) all compiled for you instead of having to keyword everything I guess.

And that's enough rambling, sleep.

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

#29

Post by Achshar »

thegyppo wrote: post #6

Alexa data would suggest that their popularity is increasing: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/blekko.com# I really like some of their services like "Grep the Web" however I'm too used to Google to change (plus I don't see any other search engine drive anywhere near the volume they do).

alexa is HIGHLY unreliable. you might as well ask duckduckgo about blekko's performance.

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

#30

Post by drostie »

I've been using Scroogle for a while, which just aggregates Google searches to its own IPs so that you remain anonymous to Google. There are four problems with Scroogle, not necessarily easy to solve:

(1) No Google Maps. Honestly I'll probably keep using Google Maps whatever else happens. I could give up Gmail and I'd still keep Google Maps. (2) No Google Calculator. This would be more important if Google hadn't changed their calculator app over the past couple of years, making it much more difficult/useless for unit conversions. Still, it would be nice if I could get Google Calculator results through Scroogle, and it shouldn't be that hard. (3) No image searches. This is one big reason to use Blekko right now; it is not Google Images and it has a nice image search which can be activated from the search line. (4) Scroogle keeps going down. This is Google's fault; Google should have whitelisted Scroogle as not-a-bot and supported their endeavor. Over the past months the problem has been that Google thinks Scroogle is a bot; but every couple of months there's also a time-frame where Google changes the antiquated search pages which Scroogle queries to make its searches.

For all that, I still like Scroogle and will probably continue to use it for the next couple of months. But Blekko is where I go when I want to do an image search.

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