Making Use of the Mighty Slashtag With Blekko

In the internet universe there are two sure fire ways to go bust these days. First, distribute and run a peer-to-peer network that looks the other way when it comes to copyright. Second, be brave/stupid enough to compete with Google. That too, in search. As things stand today, Google knows more about search and its intricacies than just about anyone else. This doesn’t stop entrepreneurs from dreaming about taking a bite of the fat juicy pie known as targeted advertising and venture capitalists to throw money at them.

All the so called “Google killers” have not been killed by Google. They just rolled over and died because of the fact that they are just not capable of delivering better search results. Today we’ll check out how a new entrant, blekko, is trying to make search better with slashtags.

Overview

For a change, blekko doesn’t claim to be a Google killer and defines itself as a better way to search the web by using slashtags. Slashtags act as filters and you can now search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites or the ones you deem irrelevant. You can take the help of your friends, subject matter experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don’t. We’ll see how to create a slashtag a little later.

blekko is free to use just like other search engines. You can access slashtags that have been created already without an account. But, if you plan to create your own slashtag and plan to improve it over time, you’ll need to sign up. Signing up is simple and you don’t have to go through email activation to access your account.

User Interface

Logged in or not, blekko’s home page has the same user interface that mimics that of Google. There’s a search box and a few links that are so tiny, you’ll hardly take notice. There is no extra options like Am feeling lucky and all you have got is the search box. If you plan to login, use the link at the top right corner of the page.

Searching for a Keyword

Today we’ve all gotten used to the awesomeness of Google Instant and, even without prejudice, it’s hard to imagine a better feature from a relative newcomer in this vertical. But, blekko has a slightly similar trick up its sleeve-it starts displaying suggestions of related slashtags to help you narrow your search parameters.

I was actually looking for when the next movie of Will Smith is going to be released (nothing is on slate until 2012). blekko’s suggestions had slashtags that take you directly to his movie works and related items like gossip, movie reviews, gossip about his famous wife and so on. Strangely his popular works from TV and his singing career didn’t have dedicated slashtags.

I chose to ignore the slashtag, so as to see how good blekko’s generic search results are. Actually they weren’t anything radically different from Google’s. Both the search engines displayed almost exactly the same links and some links were even displayed in the same order. But, to blekko’ s credit, it showed a link to Will Smith’s Twitter profile while Google didn’t.

Coming to the way the results are displayed, it’s the same three column layout and looks like no out of the box design ideas were considered. But, it works just fine and hence no complaints here. On the left column, you have the slashtags that were shown earlier when you were searching via the homepage. On the right side, we have the option to wrap these search results in a custom slashtag for future use.

Searching with Slashtags

To see how different the search results are, I chose the slashtag that has been dedicated to his work as a movie star from the left column. The results were relatively better and relevant results started showing up. The links were mostly from movie blogs, magazines, movie news sites and online gossips rags. Basically, these are the links that will show up in the second and third page of Google results after the first page that is full of official and biographical links. Clearly a blekko slashtag search result saves some time.

Creating a Slashtag

As for creating a slashtag, you can do so from the dashboard from scratch or directly from the search results page.

Creating a slashtag is a no brainer. Name it, tag it and add the website you think will have relevant information. You will be shown a bunch of results from the link you have specified and you can add the relevant ones from the list. You can add multiple sites by just replacing them in the search box. Once you think all the links have been added, hit create and you have your very own slashtag. And a special pat on the shoulder for the blekko team for allowing you to import links from a text file. Nice Touch!

Final Thoughts

blekko’s search results may be better, but the descriptions clearly aren’t. All the descriptions are just two lines long and that’s good keeping in mind that people these days have very little patience to read. But that shouldn’t be a reason to cut sentences midway just as they hit the two line mark. A lot of descriptions don’t make sense because of this limitation.

Slashtags seem to be a feature with a lot of potential. blekko’s success in this beta launch lays primarily on making it so easy for users to create their own slashtags. Personally I would suggest that they take a crack at image search as there’s hardly any innovation in that area. As for making people switch from Google and add blekko as their default search engine, they have a very long way to go.

Share Your Thoughts!

What do you guys think of blekko? Is it really going to make a difference with just the slashtags feature? Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section. Thanks!