Blekko Review

#1

Post by obelix » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:14 PM UTC

Blekko Review
techcrunch.com

Re: Blekko Review

#2

Post by obelix » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:23 PM UTC

Slashtags are a neat idea, can't wait to try it out.

Re: Blekko Review

#3

Post by ora600 » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:41 PM UTC

I liked the idea of "unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that Blekko uses to determine relevancy".

This is a great differentiator from Google. Google can copy features like slashtags easier, but I can't imagine a large company known for its secrecy suddenly exposing their algorithms.

Re: Blekko Review

#4

Post by amichail » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:46 PM UTC

Google could combine its search engine with its app engine to allow third party developers to implement custom searches.

Third party developers could even get paid via ads that appear whenever their algorithms are used in the search results.

Re: Blekko Review

#5

Post by SandB0x » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:49 PM UTC

The Slashtags concept looks awesome, and as buzzwordy as it sounds, adding a social aspect to search by allowing Slashtag sharing could really take off. For example, a lecturer could put make a /thiscourseonly Slashtag, searching only hand picked sources.

What would be especially great is a smart form of autocomplete. Eg once you typed /date you would get dd/mm/yy or dd monthname year or similar ghosting in front of the cursor.

The only concern would be that Google and Bing could copy it fairly quickly, so hopefully their other features are strong enough.

Re: Blekko Review

#6

Post by teebes » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:53 PM UTC

ora600 wrote: post #3

I liked the idea of "unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that Blekko uses to determine relevancy". This is a great differentiator from Google. Google can copy features like slashtags easier, but I can't imagine a large company known for its secrecy suddenly exposing their algorithms.

Yes, I wonder how involved they will be with Open Source. Could really shift things a bit if a startup like Blekko shoved Google further to the center by being more 'Open' (whatever that word has come to mean) than them in the eyes of the media.

Re: Blekko Review

#7

Post by mey » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:55 PM UTC

DuckDuckGo provides some of this now as I understand it.

http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html and http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html

Re: Blekko Review

#8

Post by TotlolRon » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 10:57 PM UTC

"alternatives are a prerequisite to the illusion of choice" -- just made it up 2010

Re: Blekko Review

#9

Post by moultano » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 11:03 PM UTC

I'm really excited about having a new search engine to try. More competition isn't just good for consumers, it's also good for the field of IR.

I work in search quality at Google, and it's really exciting for me to see a result that another search engine returns that I don't understand. It inspires me to think of all the ways they might have returned it, and leads to a lot of neat ideas. For the same reason, I enjoy reading the reaction in the SEO community to major changes to Google's rankings. Sometimes we're too close to a change to see what it does effectively instead of in principle. What the SEOs conclude often ends up being a really good first-order approximation of an unintended side-effect.

If you believe that your competitors are doing incredible things, it's a great inspiration to try doing incredible things yourself, regardless of whether you're right about what they're doing.

Re: Blekko Review

#10

Post by qeorge » Mon, Jul 19, 2010, 11:06 PM UTC

This is wonderful news. In addition to the slashtags, I'm excited about all the ranking data they're showing off.

Right now your only source of ranking data straight from a search engine is Yahoo's Site Explorer, and even that data is quite limited and its future availability uncertain. I've never seen duplicate content exposed so openly.

And as ora600 said, that level of transparency is something Google exceedingly unlikely to copy.