Ask HN: Anyone using Blekko instead of Google?

[rkalla]

With all the anti-Google sentiment welling up, there are usually a post or two about DDG popping up, but I hear almost nothing about blekko (http://blekko.com/) anymore after their launch and subsequent coverage on TC in 2010.

The few times I have tried raw Blekko (basic search no tweaks with slash tags) it seemed like very comprehensive search results, but they werent ordered to my preferences so I found myself digging to page 4 or 5 before finding what I wanted. I dont know if Google's personalization is just that good or their search is that good.

Is anyone using them? Is anyone giving Google search a run for its money?

[TheBurningOr]

I tried Blekko for a bit this past fall and was not terribly impressed. I, frankly, don't understand what the /slash notation is doing. is it a filter? Is it a specific type of search?

However, I have been using DuckDuckGo almost exclusively for the past 2 months and I'm not sure that I'll be going back anytime soon. DDG is touted as being for the privacy conscious, but I can't say that was my primary motivation in switching. I have been increasingly unhappy with Google's 'bubbling' and my searches there increasingly felt like I was running in circles through crappy mailing list archives and spam sites and all their new 'features.'

DDG brought back memories of what drew me to Google in the first place, over a decade ago. It is clean, straightforward, and relevant. Yeah, I know it's running on Yahoo Search APIs which are running on Bing, but it's still a drastically different search experience.

Finally, doing a bit of research into DDGs extras and the !bang notation pages kind of sealed the deal for me. Want to know your IP address? just search "ip" Want lorem ipsum text, just search for that. Want to search the python documentation? Just use !python. Want to re-run your last search in Google? Just add !g Those features alone are enough to make it a true power user's search engine.

[dmoy]

Just to be devil's advocate here, everything you list seems to be easy to do using any web browser (since we're talking about power users here):

>Want to know your IP address? just search "ip"

https://www.google.com/search?q=ip

--> Your public IP address is 123.456.789.>256? - Learn more

>Want lorem ipsum text, just search for that

Ok that's pretty cool.

>Want to search the python documentation

For me this is a language other than python, but I have queries in chrome/opera that search by keyword. C++ is c<space>stuff, java is j<space> stuff. As an added benefit, for any internal documentation I can have keywords going directly to internal stuff.

>Want to re-run your last search in Google

Ditto with bing b<space>, amazon a<space>, etc.

As a 'power user' my needs go way beyond what any search engine does. Web browser, scripts, etc pick up the slack.

Also, am I missing something here? Everyone keeps mentioning that DDG runs off of Bing. Do they do anything in the interim to your queries, or do you get the same results by going to bing.com? And if so, is everyone just arguing that bing's results are better than Google's now? (Could be, I dunno).

It is kinda cool that you get wolfram results, etc (wherever they pulled lorem ipsum from for example) all compiled for you instead of having to keyword everything I guess.

And that's enough rambling, sleep.

[lusr]

Hmmm I wasn't too impressed with DDG results in the past. I just tried it again with "efficient self organising maps implementation". The DDG results are completely useless nevermind almost totally irrelevant to my query. Then I remembered American English spelling and tried again with "organizing". DDG results improved, but the fact I have to remember such details is annoying (I don't with Google, Yahoo or Bing).

Having run the query on the other engines, Google & Bing are on par (I use Google exclusively but should probably check Bing from time to time), Yahoo 2nd most useful (somewhat generic results, though), DDG 3rd (student projects in the search results vs. published papers in the other engine results, results that are overly broad) and Blekko the worst (it seems to just pump out results with one or two of the words I queried, no concept of relevance).

[msbarnett]

Slashtags are a way to build specific search domains. The easiest way to understand one is to build one for yourself.

Example: I built myself a /objc slashtag that includes Apple's docs, Stackoverflow, Cocoadev.com, Mike Ash's blog, and a few other sources.

Now, when I go to blekko and search, say, "calendars /objc", I get only info about calendars in objective-c from those sources, and no noise.

Edit: I find this rather more useful than DDGs ! Syntax in that it's user-extensible, and lets me aggregate many site searches into one slashtag, rather than just punting me to a specific site's engine.

[greglindahl]

Some slashtags are filters. Other ones are a specific type of search. DDG uses ! in a somewhat similar fashion to /; for example, on blekko, adding /google does your search on google. Adding /python does your search on a list of 136 important Python websites. And you can volunteer to help edit the /python slashtag.

[btubbs]

I hadn't heard of Blekko, so I Googled it, but I accidentally typed it "blekki". Google autocorrected it, and Blekko was still the top result.

That didn't happen on Blekko. I got a lot of results about Bill Lekki. Then a few minutes later the results changed and the Wikipedia page for Blekko was the top result. Weird.

[rkalla]

Looks like the Blekko team was watching this thread and probably the traffic in-bound from it and (maybe) tweaking on the fly.

[drostie]

I've been using Scroogle for a while, which just aggregates Google searches to its own IPs so that you remain anonymous to Google. There are four problems with Scroogle, not necessarily easy to solve:

(1) No Google Maps. Honestly I'll probably keep using Google Maps whatever else happens. I could give up Gmail and I'd still keep Google Maps. (2) No Google Calculator. This would be more important if Google hadn't changed their calculator app over the past couple of years, making it much more difficult/useless for unit conversions. Still, it would be nice if I could get Google Calculator results through Scroogle, and it shouldn't be that hard. (3) No image searches. This is one big reason to use Blekko right now; it is not Google Images and it has a nice image search which can be activated from the search line. (4) Scroogle keeps going down. This is Google's fault; Google should have whitelisted Scroogle as not-a-bot and supported their endeavor. Over the past months the problem has been that Google thinks Scroogle is a bot; but every couple of months there's also a time-frame where Google changes the antiquated search pages which Scroogle queries to make its searches.

For all that, I still like Scroogle and will probably continue to use it for the next couple of months. But Blekko is where I go when I want to do an image search.

[pilom]

The SEO links on Blekko are really useful but I could never go without my !bang syntax. DDG and chrome are my default with google just a !g away.

[w1ntermute]

You can set this up at the browser level to work with any sort of search. Look up Firefox Quick Searches (a similar thing exists in Chrome).

[notatoad]

what's blekko?

"all the anti-google sentiment" is nonsense. it's not really anti-google. people get emotional about products and companies they care about. the people who whine about every little change google makes are the same ones who whine about every little change facebook makes: the biggest fans of those products.

[somestuff]

No its rather apt in my opinion.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020462420...

"Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers."

Oh hello whats this? Google execs knowingly assisting illegal operations peddling illicit drugs from manufactures unknown? Since when does their 'lets not be evil overlords' policy include knowingly taking cash to help peddle drugs coming from illicit sources.

"By the end of the operation in mid-2009, agents were buying Google ads for sites purportedly selling such prescription-only narcotics as oxycodone and hydrocodone. Agents also got Google's sales office in China to approve a site selling Prozac and Valium to U.S. customers without a prescription.

"Google's employees were instrumental in bypassing policy regarding pharmacy verification," Mr. Whitaker told the Journal. "The websites were blatantly illegal."

At the agents' direction, Mr. Whitaker said he signaled his illegal intent to Google ad executives, including Google's top manager in Mexico. As a tape recorder ran, he walked Google executives through the illegal parts of the websites. He said he told ad executives that U.S. Customs had seized shipments, for example, and that one client wanted to be "the biggest steroid dealer in the United States.""

Seriously what the fuck? The anti-google sentiment is nonsense?

"The government's case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads.

Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting. "We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on," he said in an interview after the August settlement.

Mr. Neronha declined to detail the evidence, which was presented in secret to a federal grand jury. Other people familiar with the case said internal emails showed Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Google executive who left in 2008 for Facebook Inc., had raised concerns about the ads."

I'm sure it was just a rogue employee of one of their far off subsids, oh wait nevermind I guess it went to the top, lulz. Sorry for posting so much of the article but your simple ignorant line deserves all the filth contained in the url, I'd rather not depend on you clicking to read it.

The actions listed in that article even at their most innocent leaves me with such a foul feeling that it can be nothing else but Evil.

[yalimkgerger]

Funny you asked. I signed up couple of days ago, deciding that slash tags should be the best way to get rid of all the crap in google's search results. I was a little confused though. Does Blekko expect me to choose which slash tag I want to use for my query? If that is the case, I think it will be hard for them to go mainstream. I can do it, no problem. But an average user will not be able to. I was expecting some sort of an intelligent algorithm which would decide which slash tags to use with my query. I think it all should be seamless to the user. They should curate the slash tags themselves and apply them to the search queries when relevant.

They've been around for a while. So I think it is fair to expect more powerful features from them. Color me worried. It would be a shame if they don't get more momentum. I think their idea of slash tags is a killer one. I just think they have not implemented enough or going to the wrong direction.

To sum up: 1) slash tags are just brilliant. 2) slash tags should be seamless to the user and be applied by Blekko automatically to each search query. 3) They should build their own slash tags, not relying on crows sourced ones. They should go crazy about this. Doesn't seem like they are. 4) More power to them. I love them

[greglindahl]

Have you tried blekko? We suggest slashtags as you type, we suggest more slashtags after you've searched, and we often automatically add slashtags to your search if you didn't specify one. Most of the /blekko slashtags (the most visible) ones are build by a combination of our in-house content team, and subject-matter experts -- the /health slashtag has an outside editor who's a medical librarian at a major teaching hospital.

Great suggestions! :-)

[ElbertF]

I was surprised to finally see my own blog showing up in the results when I googl-, err, searched for my own name. But then I searched for "name /blog" and my blog disappeared. It did however show an irrelevant GitHub page with a pull request I once submitted. So it seems to work for rough searches but refining needs some... Refining. I won't be making the switch today.

[greglindahl]

Assuming you mean elbertf.com, I filed a bug. We did recognize it as a WordPress blog, but for some reason the front page is getting a poor rank with /blog and is OK without it. BTW, you can send bug reports like this to [email protected].

[thegyppo]

Alexa data would suggest that their popularity is increasing: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/blekko.com#

I really like some of their services like "Grep the Web" however I'm too used to Google to change (plus I don't see any other search engine drive anywhere near the volume they do).

[Achshar]

alexa is HIGHLY unreliable. you might as well ask duckduckgo about blekko's performance.

[jiyinyiyong]

I tried to use it months ago while I found Google was slow here. But Blekko's Chinese search results are quite bad.

[greglindahl]

We're concentrating on the US and English for now. A startup can only do so much, so fast.

[Intermediate]

I tried to use blekko, but I found their search results not very relevant. However I using them from time to time just to show my support and to check if there is any improvement in search relevance.

[greglindahl]

Our last big step up in relevance was launched on December 15, have you tried us since?

[gootik]

I find it a little ironic that I had to Google "Blekko". Aside from this, Blekko's results are not as good as Google. For me at least.

[greglindahl]

We'd love to hear your feedback at [email protected], thanks!

[zaknanny]

What are Blekko's thoughts on 'do no evil'? If they get popular, would they fall into the same trap that Google has, or would they stay pure?

[rkalla]

This is an impossible-to-answer question. I do NOT speak for the Blekko company, but while they are small and making $100,000s or millions it is easy to say "We are free, no spying!" (same for DDG).

As soon as you take Blekko public and they are making BILLIONS and beholden to stock holders, they won't have a choice but to slowly roll that back just like we are seeing with Google.

The market won't let Google stay ambivalent; not with all that potential for profit.

[greglindahl]

You can check out our privacy policy and prefs -- we let you opt out of all ads, out of facebook integration, etc etc, so that we don't collect info about people who don't want it collected.

[zeroboy]

Yes, I use Blekko regularly. I'm often (but not always) pleasantly surprised with it's search results.

The slashes take some getting used to, but Blekko is worth an honest go.