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Blekko

Search engine www.blekko.com reviewed at Zyra's website


Note: The official site of Blekko is www.blekko.com and Zyra's website is www.zyra.org.uk . Zyra's website (which is .ORG.UK even though it's international) is about all kinds of things, so it's understandable that's there's a review about this new search engine service Blekko!

Blekko, whose motto is "The Spam-Free Search Engine", was started at a time when Google was having problems. Google had for a long time been the majority search provider, although not quite a monopoly. The problem with Google having such a position was that it was besieged by search engine cheats! Worse, though, was what Google did about it. Google did some bizarre things which have hurt honest sites like mine! So, now there is a groundswell of keen opinion across the Internet to Replace Google. The problem with trying to replace Google is that a few years ago Google was quite good, and it's only recently become naff. In that environment, most other search engines were quite poor, and some of them very poor. Quality of a search engine can be checked by seeing if it comes up with good results, and also seeing if thing which are already known to be good come up in searches there.

For example, I have a page called Cheer Me Up. It does what it says on the can (to quote Ronseal). It is a page about being cheered up, and its purpose is to cheer people up. The idea is, people who want to be cheered up go to that page and hopefully it actually does cheer them up. Most people like it! A few don't, but that's their problem.

Although "Cheer Me Up" had done well for years on Google and had cheered up a great many people, especially during the global recession which was at the time termed the credit crunch (when it had one visit every 4 minutes), in more recent times Google has demoted it, another case of floccinaucinihihilipilification if I may say so, and incidentally, my page about that word has also been demoted on Google.

In contrast, Blekko has correctly identified the Cheer Me Up page as good, and on 2012/06/22 had it as Number1 on Blekko world search. Well Done to Blekko!

As a consequence, I felt I should write this page.

The thing is, Google was OK for years, but then became infested with nonsense, and then Google tried to deal with their problem by some form of witchfinding justice, falsely accusing various sites like this. So, the need for a DECENT SEARCH ENGINE is more pressing than ever!

Note: Blekko does not do that absurd page title changing thing that Google does.

At a time when Google was sort-of the monopoly and most new rival search engines weren't very good, Blekko stood out as being different, and had some hope of dethroning Google.

Blekko could become the new replacement for Google provided...

* Blekko remains "the spam free search engine" and doesn't get nobbled by loads of rubbish from search engine cheats.

* Blekko doesn't get bought-out by various rivals, corporate interests, etc.

* Blekko doesn't become naff by pandering to evils such as Facebook, or to cheap promotion of things with no relevancy.

The crucial thing is the Algorithm. Has Blekko got a good algorithm? Better than the Google algorithm? Well, it is possible. Blekko has a huge advantage over Google which Google has not got! Blekko is able to learn by Google's mistakes. This takes two forms. For one thing, Google has been around longer and has made mistakes which can be learned from (the converse not being true). For another thing, Blekko has different philosophies. For example, if a website is a CONTENT FARM, then Blekko will ban it. Google, in contrast, will try to make up some rules which will marginalise it. This may or may not be effective.

Blekko is at risk of bombardment from cheat sites but only after it has gained a large percentage of the search market. The amount of cheating that there is could be reduced considerably if there were more search engines rather than a monoculture.

Blekko may have some strategy against search engine cheating which is more effective than that used by Google. We will see as time goes on.

Here are a few Blekko references:

www.blekko.com - official site

http://voices.yahoo.com/blekko-slashtag-search-engine-promises-no-spam-should-7113064.html

http://blog.blekko.com/2011/07/25/14-facts-more-about-blekko-–-infographic/

http://techland.time.com/2011/03/10/one-million-fewer-things-to-worry-about-blekko-search-engine-kills-off-spam-sites/

https://blekko.com/about

A few other things:

It's important Blekko doesn't get polluted by Facebook and the problems which result from corruption of the social integrity of Internet Freedom.

It's also important Blekko isn't bought-out by some sinister corporation. Remember: Linux can't be bought out.

Note: Blekko has already been attacked by the Google Redirect virus. This redirects searches to something which looks like Blekko. However it's a virus, presumably designed to damage reputations. It isn't Google's fault, and it isn't Blekko's fault. It's just a malware thing. Time to get some antivirus and anti-spyware and then set your options back to what you want.