If you work with Google you most likely enjoy a love-hate relationship with them.
You love the traffic they send, but you hate the way they move, rename, camouflage and smoke-screen the goal posts.
Yet what choice do you have? There are alternatives, but if you combine all the traffic they might collectively send you each month, you’re still only looking at a very small percentage of what Google can and will generate.
New search engines come and go, and I rarely bother to even look at them. But blekko is actually interesting.
“blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don’t.“
Their bill of rights is particularly eye-catching:
“1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated“
I like the way listings can be instantly marked as spam, and many of the results are surprisingly accurate.
More importantly, blekko has a lot to offer from an SEO point of view.
Take a look at the tag under each title:
tag is for making use of their slashtag system.
seo provides an enormous amount of useful information:
links instantly displays all pages linking to the page/website.
And more.
Whether blekko poses any sort of threat to Google remains to be seen. But as it stands it’s already an extremely useful SEO tool.
