Blekko - A Search Engine Safe for Students - 13 views
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Allison Burrell on 02 Nov 10"Blekko, a new search engine, is trying to provide more relevant search results that are spammer and content-farm free. Described as "Wikipedia meets search", the engine will use human oversight to separate that trusted content from that of spam. They also use the slashtag, /, to limit the results to only those of trusted sites. Blekko has predefined slashtags that you can use, like "/people" for a people search or /blog for a blog search. There are also topics and other categories like /basketball or /android. Since many of these tags are predefined, you might have to create your own slashtag if Blekko does not recognize what you are searching for. As you name your slashtag, you can list keywords and then enter the sites you want Blekko to search. You can share or browse slashtags of other users, too. This engine is heavily based on its users, much like Wikipedia is. Since it is still in beta testing stages, it is very likely that the site will improve sometimes in the near future. This search engine would work well in a classroom. With the safe environments that teachers want to provide with children who are searching the Internet, Blekko would help ensure that they are yielding appropriate results. It would also be a great tool to use with parents at home when browsing the Internet with their children."
