Blekko is a new entrant in the search engine space, which – according to many – has the potential to give Google a run for its money in the long run. It’s for people looking for more out of web search. Google may have a monopoly on the market and rightfully so, but there is always room for an innovative idea to shine through and take its own spot in the realm of search.

Blekko’s site is a welcome oasis in the constantly growing collection of spam saturating the inter-webs. It has built-in deterrents to edit spam-flooded searches like health, lyrics, cars, etc, which can really speed up your productivity. You won’t have to spend the extra time filtering out sketchy looking websites on your own.

Slashtags: Blekko’s Claim to Fame

Although Blekko’s anti-spam policy is wonderful in its own right, the real stars here are Blekko’s slashtags. They are an addition that you add after your search keyword to narrow down the results. For instance, if you search “cloud” you will get a bunch of different slashtags to choose from and add to your search.

As you can see, depending on what kind of cloud you are looking for, there are unique slashtags to choose. If you wanted sites about “cloud” in a computing context you would choose the /tech slashtag, or if you were referring to “cloud” as in the clouds in the sky then you would pick /science and all of your search results should correspond to clouds in the context of science, rather than technology. It is all very simple to understand, which is rare for such a powerful feature.

There is one more stellar feature worth mentioning. Blekko has the option to create your very own free user profile that can be used to make your own slashtags specific to you and your needs. As an example, I created the slashtag “/tech-blogs” that only searches the various technology websites that I read and enjoy. Therefore, I don’t have to spend time scrolling through an overwhelming amount of search results to find the sites that I trust.

To create your own slashtag, you just sign up for a free profile and once you are on the home screen (shown below), click on the create a slashtag link.

The page that comes up will hold the form you see below. You will need to name your slashtag, and specify keywords that you would like to include with every search containing the slashtag that you are creating. You will then list the websites and/or slashtags that you would prefer to limit your searches to. There is even a search bar built in to speed up the process by helping you easily identify the URLs of your favorite sites.

Once you are done, you can add your slashtag to any future search and enjoy the simplified list of results that is generated. And in case you are worried about missing out on the unfiltered search results, they are offered below your edited results preceded by the heading “additional web results’. They really did think of everything!

So get on the Blekko train and ride it all the way to happiness (when it comes to web search that is).