Blekko – Looking To Defeat “SEO Spam”

Earlier this week, a new search engine under the title of ‘Bleeko’ was launched to the online public. CEO and Co-Founder Rich Skrenta claims that Blekko offers a real alternative to the search engine giants, as it uses a unique blend of Twitter and Wikipedia style result delivery.

The main feature of Blekko is its use of ‘Slashtags’, known for its use on Twitter, the slashtag is used to provide extra information about the term, for example:

Here is something I think everyone would find useful: <www.wpwd.co.uk> /cc @someInterestedParty

However Blekko have taken this idea and turned it into a way in which the search engine can be edited, by users – in the same style as wikipedia – to provide almost mini search engines, within the search engine, about different topics. Blekko’s users and editors can select relevant websites to ‘slashtag’ for a certain term, ideally to make searches more accurate and cut our irrelevant results.

For example, a search for Web Design will bring a list of suggestions to closer fit your specification, so if looking for a web design and SEO company, you would click on the suggestion of Web Design /SEO, and then be rewarded with a selection of pre-chosen websites relating to both web design and SEO.

The purpose of this, according to Rich Skrenta, is to defeat “SEO Spam” – keyword stuffed websites, content farms, and websites which only purpose is to act as some form of SEO.

Many search engines have attempted to take on the might of Google and failed, will Blekko be joining that list? Will the whole slashtag agenda be to much confusion and hassle for people when Google simply supplies results in a click? or could this be the new power here to stay, ready to bring the biggest change to SEO since Googles algorithm change?

This remains to be seen, however we will be keeping tabs on Bleeko and adding this new knowledge to our SEO arsenal.