Publishers push Common Crawl to stop collecting content for AI training
Could AI lose a key source of training data? Major publishers want Common Crawl to stop collecting and sharing their content.
Topic: Rich Skrenta
Navigating the AI wars: Winning SEO strategies for brands
See how AI is changing our quest for information, the key players in the AI wars and the attributes that will define the future of search.
Restaurant app Tobiko goes old school by shunning user reviews
The app represents a return to the simplicity of expert reviews.
Goodbye Blekko: Search Engine Joins IBM’s Watson Team
Quiet for nearly two years, Blekko's home page says its team and technology are now part of IBM's Watson technology.
The Recirculation Gap: Why Google Sends More Traffic Than Its Search Market Share Suggests
How can publishers receive a greater percentage of search traffic from Google than the market share Google has in the U.S.? It’s likely due to what I call “The Recirculation Gap” and how Google probably “recirculates” searches back into itself less than Yahoo and Bing. Every month for ages, it seems the same. comScore releases a “U.S. […]
Blekko’s Izik Search App Comes To iPhone, Android Devices
This morning, Blekko announced that its tablet search app, izik, is now available for the iPhone and Android devices. Currently there isn’t a Blekko mobile app, but the mobile Web version of the site is optimized for smartphones. Izik for iPad became available in January. Blekko has moved closer to izik in terms of look and […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 6, 2013
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Pushes To Build Marketshare Through “Bing It On” For Faster Airport Wifi I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. When I tapped into […]
Blekko Lays Off Eight, Raises $6 Million More
Earlier this week blekko, which just introduced a bold new UI, had a reduction in force. Eight people were let go “as part of an effort to reduce costs,” said CEO Rich Skrenta, who added, “blekko’s revenues are growing and these cost reductions will help us as we work toward profitability.” Skrenta told me by […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 29, 2013
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Video: Google’s Matt Cutts On Advertorials & Webmaster Guidelines Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video today on YouTube clarifying Google’s stance on Advertorials and “native advertising.” […]
Seeking Broader Appeal Blekko Offers Bold New UI
In January, upstart search engine Blekko launched a specialized tablet app called Izik. The UI and overall experience were optimized for the touch-screen devices. Search results were more visual and finger friendly. Most of all, CEO Rich Skrenta stressed that Izik was leaving behind the familiar “10 blue links.” As part of the Izik launch, […]
Blekko Launches New Tablet Search Engine “Izik”
Rich Skrenta and team at blekko are launching “izik,” a new tablet search engine (and browser) designed to deliver a “from the ground up,” tablet friendly search experience. You can also use it on the PC; however the experience is best on a tablet. It’s available as an app for the iPad or Android tablets. […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 16, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google: Further Penguin Update “Jolts” To Come; Panda Is Smoother & Monthly Fasten your seat belt, if you’ve been spamming Google. The anti-spam “Penguin Update” will have more jolts in the […]
Free No More: Blekko’s SEO Tools Are Now A Paid Product
Blekko has changed its previously free SEO tools into a paid service, putting it in competition with the likes of SEOmoz.org, Ahrefs.com, MajesticSEO.com, SEMrush.com and other SEO data/tool providers. There’s been no official announcement of the change, but Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta confirmed to us that the company’s SEO tools and data now require a […]
Blekko’s Traffic Is Up Almost 400 Percent; Here Are The CEO’s Five Reasons Why
By the end of April, traffic to Blekko will likely have quadrupled since January 1st, and the company has a handful of reasons why it thinks that’s happening. More on the explanation later; first, the numbers. The “slashtags” search engine has already seen a 337 percent gain in unique visitors this year. That’s as of […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 16, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Showing Fewer Than 10 Results For Some Searches? It appears Google is testing showing fewer than the typical 10 web search results, in what might either be a test or […]
Blekko Testing Search Ads
MediaPost reports that Blekko, the slashtags search engine, has started testing monetization efforts through search ads. Currently, the ads are provided through ad fees from Google and Bing. Blekko has yet to build out their own ad network. Rich Skrenta, Blekko founder and CEO said, “we’re still ironing out the kinks.” They are testing out […]
Blekko Expands: Bigger Index, More Slashtags & New Design
Blekko is closing out 2011 with a round of updates that affect the search engine’s front- and back-end — both how it looks and how it works. The upstart search engine has announced three changes as part of a “major upgrade” to end the year: 1.) “Significant improvements to index quality and relevance” Blekko has […]
SMX East 2011: Ask The Search Engines
Ask The Search Engines Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 In this session, you can ask questions and get direct answers from engineers from Google, Bing and Blekko about crawling, indexing, ranking and other organic search issues. [flv:https://searchengineland.com/video_assets/east11/ppt/570.flv 364 264] Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land Speakers: Duane Forrester, BingTiffany Oberoi, GoogleRich […]
Russian Search Engine Yandex Leads $30 Million Investment In Blekko
Blekko is the either the fourth US search engine or the third if you no longer consider Yahoo a search engine. And the company has been able to maintain visibility and stir the pot with its persistent criticism of Google search results being spam-filled. Now Blekko has secured $30 million in new funding from a […]
Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
Is Google (and Bing, by the way) not being “responsible” by failing to remove an anti-Rick Santorum web site? The Republican presidential candidate believes so, speaking out this week against an unfavorable listing for his name. But “fixing” Santorum’s “Google problem” isn’t as easy as it sounds. Defining Santorum For those who aren’t familiar with […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 21, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Comparing Facebook Like vs. Google +1 Google’s new +1 feature was one of SMX Advanced Seattle most engaging sessions and, as a speaker, I have received a wide variety of feedback […]
Blekko Slashes More Spam With “Zorro” Update
Blekko has found its mantra: the war on spam. The search startup, now six months old, is trying to challenge Bing and Google with a strategy that puts human curation and editorial judgment at the center of search and banishes spam altogether. CEO Rich Skrenta has been relentless in asserting that Google is filled with […]
Blekko Adds Facebook Comments To Search Results (But Why?)
If you’ve been hoping that someone’s search engine would turn into a social network, today is your lucky day. Sure, Google and Bing have been making search results more social, and Bing shows Facebook “likes” in its search results, and Google has its +1 button experiment … but that’s nothing compared to what Blekko is […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 29, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google’s Android To Dominate Globally In 2011: Report Tech consulting firm IDC has predicted that Google’s mobile operating system will become the dominant mobile platform this year, achieving a global market […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 24, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Yahoo Search Direct Alphabet: Where Every Letter Starts With Yahoo And you thought Google favored its own properties? Check this out: In Yahoo’s new Search Direct feature, 21 of the […]
“Anti-Search Engine” FindTheBest Adds Buying Guides, Top 10 Slideshows
There are a number of ways to describe FindTheBest, the site launched last year by DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor. One is “decision engine” another might be “comparison engine,” a third could be “anti-search engine.” It might be called an “anti-search engine” because, like Blekko’s Rich Skrenta, FindTheBest’s O’Conner believes that search results have become cluttered […]
Blekko Blocks More “Spam” Domains: 1.1 Million Of Them
Search engine Blekko has announced that it has now blocked 1.1 million web sites from its search results using a new system it calls “AdSpam,” and new pages from any web site won’t be added if they don’t pass muster. Blocking Spam Before It Gets In From the Blekko press release: “This new technology will […]
Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s Panda Algorithm Change?
On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top search results. Content farms were seen by many as the target. Were they hit? Who was hit? Some figures are coming out.
Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Panda” Algorithm Update
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material. New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to […]
Blekko: Actually We Have A Million Slashtags
Embargoed news for this morning was published last week. That news was that Blekko had 30 million search queries in January and “users have created more than 110,000 slashtags since the company’s launch in November, an indication the search market is thirsty for innovation.” Blekko has recently gained attention for banning the “top 20 spam […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 1, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they […]
Live Blogging Bing’s Future Of Search Event
Bing and Big Think are hosting”Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box,” a four hour event today in San Francisco looking at the future of search. We’ve got various luminaries lined-up. Google will be on a panel. There’s that whole Google says Bing is copying them thing that just happened. Plus, Blekko’s here — and it […]
Blekko Bans Content Farms From Its Index
TechCrunch reports Blekko, the SlashTag search engine, has made the bold move of banning some “content farms” from their index completely. Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s CEO confirmed the ban with us today. He told us Blekko has decided to ban the “top 20 spam sites from blekko’s index entirely, based on our users click /spam on […]
Blekko Launches Spam Clock To Keep Pressure On Google
Every hour, one million spam pages are created. That’s a stat that start-up search engine Blekko has now put out — complete with a new “Spam Clock” showing a count-up of spam pages created since the first of the year.
Google Drops Google Directory Search Option
The Google Directory seems to have dropped the option to search within the directory. If you visit the Google Directory the only search box you will see is a “Google search” box. A week or two ago it was a “Search Directory” button, but that is now gone. Google is even missing the search within […]
Blekko, Bing & How Facebook Likes Are Changing Search
Bing has received a good deal of coverage for its integration of Facebook Likes into search results. In its Bing Search Summit last week, Microsoft said that Likes will influence ranking and create more personalized search results over time. As Microsoft’s Satya Nadella said, it’s “search quality foundationally influenced by the social graph.” Despite its […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 13, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Googler Quits To Build Browser To Block Google Tracking TechCrunch reports Brian Kennish, a former Googler, quit Google a few weeks ago in order to build a browser that essentially blocks […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 1, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live Blekko, the long anticipated search engine founded by Rich Skrenta, has finally opened to the public. The service offers an interesting way to “slash” […]
Google And Blekko Head-To-Head: Blekko Lives To Fight Another Day
What’s immediately clear from conducting a lot of searches on both Blekko and Google in a concentrated period of time is that the upstart has built a credible search engine that people can use today with a good success. (For a general overview see Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live.) However in a head-to-head […]
Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live
Blekko, the long anticipated search engine founded by Rich Skrenta, has finally opened to the public. The service offers an interesting way to “slash” or create specialty search engines for any topic, along with new features the company hopes will improve relevancy. My previous article, Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web, goes […]