

Blekko Review - obelix
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/techcrunch-review-the-blekko-search-engine-prepares-to-launch/

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moultano
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.

~~~
prakash
_I'm really excited about having a new search engine to try._

Give DuckDuckGo a try for a couple of weeks, you probably won't go back to
whichever search engine you are using currently :-)

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jerguismi
It doesn't work very well in Finland. I guess I'll be using google for a
while, since internationalization usually isn't much of a concern for smaller
startups.

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ora600
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.

~~~
teebes
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.

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SandB0x
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.

~~~
evgen
As they VC query used to go: "is this a feature or a company?" So far Blekko
looks like a feature, but I will reserve judgement until I can actually play
with it a bit. I really hope that this slashtags bit is not the only
interesting thing they have to show after several years of work. OTOH, this
does fit what seems to be a pattern for Rich Skrenta and his team: find an
already occupied niche and crank out something that has 60-70% of the polish
of the leader with a few new features and then flip the whole thing to someone
who is desperate to get in or stay in the game.

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mey
DuckDuckGo provides some of this now as I understand it.

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

~~~
agscala
Kindof, I think that DDG's bang searches take you to the respective website's
search API. This one seems like it shows results in blekko's website simply
filtered any way you create.

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krishna2
The screencast: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/blekko-screencast-and-
found...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/blekko-screencast-and-founder-
interview/)

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qeorge
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.

~~~
evgen
The problem with making ranking data a "feature" is that the only ones who
care about this information only care about what the ranking data is on
Google. What the rank is for your site on Blekko is of no value whatsoever.

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amichail
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.

~~~
yurylifshits
Actually, you just have described Yahoo BOSS ("Build your own search engine")
program :)

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

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speek
Anybody here from Blekko? I'd love a special HN invite :-)

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jsrfded
Yes, being an HN reader is definitely a plus. :-)

The best way to get an invite is hit us on twitter or facebook (see links from
blekko.com). Then we can DM you an invite when we have them ready.

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retube
Oh man why does everything have to be via facebook, twitter et al? I only do
email...

~~~
joubert
Why don't you try an email address on the contact page?
<http://blekko.com/contact.html>

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

