| blekko.com | |
| Screenshot Size: | 220px |
| Type: | Search engine |
| Language: | English |
| Owner: | IBM (International Business Machines) |
| Launch Date: | November 1, 2010 |
| Current Status: | Defunct (March 27, 2015) |
Blekko, trademarked as blekko (lowercase), was a company that provided a web search engine with the stated goal of providing better search results than those offered by Google Search, with results gathered from a set of 3 billion trusted webpages and excluding such sites as content farms. The company's site, launched to the public on November 1, 2010, used slashtags to provide results for common searches. Blekko also offered a downloadable search bar. It was acquired by IBM in March 2015, and the service was discontinued.
Blekko used an initiative called slashtags,[1] consisting of a text tag preceded by a "/" slash character, to allow ease of searching and categorise searches. System and pre-defined slashtags allowed users to start searching right away. Users could create slashtags after signup, to perform custom-sorted searches and to reduce spam.[2]
The following features were available to all users:
Blekko offered a downloadable browser toolbar or search bar which changes default search and home page URLs of the user's web browsers.[4]
In 2010, John Dvorak described the site as adding "so much weird dimensionality" to search, and recommended it as "the best out-of-the-chute new engine I've seen in the last 10 years".[5] In Matthew Rogers' review of the site, he found it "slow and cumbersome", and stated that he did not understand the necessity or utility for slashtags.[6] In his PCMag.com review, Jeffrey L. Wilson expressed approval of some search results, but criticized the site's social features which "bog down the search experience."[7]