Blekko Mobile Application for iPhone and Android Devices Now Available

Blekko, the new search engine that is using human curation to eliminate spam from search results, launched its new iPhone and Android app. Users can now download the Blekko search app and slash in what they want and slash out what they don't -- directly from the iPhone and Android devices.

Blekko Mobile Application for iPhone and Android Devices Now Available

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Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias

Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ--each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports in Cnet that along comes Blekko whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like "liberal" or "conservative." Categorization lists are applied by appending a "slashtag." The query, "climate change /conservative" will give you politically slanted results, for example. "Climate change /science" will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept--that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed --gets some traction writes Needleman but "Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.""

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Sorry, Blekko Is Doomed

A new search-engine called Blekko just launched. It's the latest in a long line of companies to try to leapfrog Google by providing "better" search results.

Specifically, in Blekko's case, the company is using human input into algorithmic results to screen out content from content farms like Demand Media.

For those who hate Demand Media content--a subset of those who even know they are consuming Demand Media content--this sounds like a fine idea. For those who occasionally find value in some Demand Media content, whether or not they know it's Demand Media content, it doesn't. 

But in any event, Blekko's chances of succeeding using this strategy are tiny.  Here's why:

1. For the most part, search isn't broken.  Google search is generally excellent.  With a few queries, most people can find exactly what they're looking for.

2. When search IS broken, the problem is usually not Demand Media content.  It's because the question you're asking generally isn't well-suited to being answered by algorithmic search.

3. Normal people haven't the faintest idea what "slashtags" are or why they would ever want to use them.  A Blekko proponent in our office says that people don't have to know what slashtags are to use Blekko, but the fact that the company's slogan is "slash the web" is a bad sign. It would be like Google talking about Boolean logic.  "Slashtags" may have some meaning and create excitement in a tiny corner of the world, but if Blekko has any broader ambitions, it should stop talking about them immediately.

Yes, search engines could do a much better job of telling you which restaurants you should eat at, which cameras you should buy, and many other things--but, again, the reason search is weak on those queries generally isn't a Demand Media problem.  It's an imperfect information and subjectivity problem (which is where social media comes in.)

And, more broadly, the reason all next-generation search engines have pretty much failed thus far (including Bing, which is burning $2 billion a year trying to leapfrog Google) is that the current generation of search engines--namely Google--is pretty darn good.

YES, Google needs to keep innovating. YES, Google often goes to sleep at the switch. But NO, a moderate improvement in some search results (arguably) will not vault a new search engine to prominence.

So if Blekko ends up building a big business, it will probably be because it pivoted into something else.

See Also: 10 Startup Ideas That Always Fail

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See Also:

• One Reason To Take New Search Engine Blekko Seriously
• New Search Engine Blekko Is Not For The Lazy
• Google-Wannabe Cuil: Worst. Launch. Ever.

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One Reason To Take New Search Engine Blekko Seriously (GOOG, MSFT)

Starting a new search engine is a rough business. Even the most promising attempts to challenge Google (and now Bing) always end up as punchlines: think Cuil or Wolfram Alpha.

Still, we think Blekko, which just launched publicly this morning, is worth paying attention to. Yes, it will probably fail -- all startups are long shots, and competing with Google and Microsoft from day one is an extreme long shot. But, Blekko doesn't need to beat either of them, but it just has to come in third place to be big enough to matter.

That said, Blekko has one big advantage over a lot of would-be Google competitors: Google couldn't copy its core selling point even if it wanted to.

The main differentiator of Blekko is the 'slashtag'. Slashtags are essentially filters for search results. Core slashtags are maintained by the community, a la Wikipedia, and consist of a list of domains that are considered authoritative on issues in those categories. So if a user types, say, '/health' after a search term, only results from sites considered sources of quality health content will be displayed.

The important new feature that is being announced with today's public launch is the 'autofiring' of slashtags. Starting with seven key search categories -- health, finance, lyrics, etc. -- Blekko algorithmically detects when a search query would normally return a lot of 'spammy' results from within a certain category, generally from SEO farms. It then automatically applies the relevant slashtag, so that users never see spammy content to begin with.

This does seem to improve the quality -- and in some cases safety -- of search results in the covered areas. And, unlike most innovations in search, this isn't something Google can simply replicate. Because the search leader is under constant regulatory scrutiny, it is constantly trying to prove that it takes no editorial stand whatsoever. Every tweak Google makes to its algorithm is met with howls of protest. If it started overtly excluding huge swathes of domains on subjective grounds, it would be swimming in lawsuits over night.

It seems clear that Blekko's slashtags can be useful for some categories of search. Whether they can be useful more broadly, and whether the company can build up a large, active community to help it make them useful, remains to be seen. But if there's really something here, Google may have trouble finding a way to replicate Blekko's upside without getting itself in trouble.

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See Also:

• New Search Tool Qwiki Won't Land You A Date With An Actress But It Will Help Plan Your Vacation
• Meet Google's New Search Boss: Udi Manber
• Google: No, We Don't Deliberately Sabotage Search Query Results

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