Blekko

Blekko was a web search engine company that positioned itself as an alternative to the dominant players by focusing on delivering high-quality, spam-free search results. Founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneur Rich Skrenta and co-founder Mike Markson, the company aimed to address the growing problem of content farms and low-value websites that gamed traditional search engine algorithms. Skrenta, the CEO, brought extensive experience from the search and social technology sectors, having previously founded the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and the news aggregator Topix. His early career was marked by the creation of the Elk Cloner virus for Apple II computers as a teenager, showcasing a long-standing deep engagement with computer systems. Markson also had a background in both technology and law, having co-founded Topix with Skrenta and worked at Terraspring, a data center automation firm.

The company's public launch occurred on November 1, 2010, after three years in development, backed by investors such as Marc Andreessen and U.S. Venture Partners. Blekko's core product was a search engine that utilized a distinctive feature called "slashtags." These slashtags, denoted by a forward slash (/), allowed users to filter and categorize searches, effectively creating curated, vertical search engines on any topic. For example, a user could add '/health' to a query to search only within a pre-vetted list of trusted health websites. This approach combined algorithmic search with a layer of human curation, as the company and its user community actively identified and tagged reputable sites while excluding spam. The platform indexed a set of 3 billion trusted webpages, deliberately excluding what it identified as content farms to improve result relevance.

Blekko's business model was intended to be based on advertising, leveraging the specific targeting capabilities offered by its slashtag system. Beyond its primary search function for general web users, the engine also provided SEO-related statistics and tools, some of which became paid features later on. The company actively campaigned against search spam, even launching a "spam clock" to highlight the volume of low-quality pages being created. In March 2015, the Blekko technology and team were acquired by IBM. The acquisition was aimed at integrating Blekko's advanced web-crawling, categorization, and intelligent filtering technologies into IBM's Watson cognitive computing platform to enhance its data analysis capabilities. Following the acquisition, the Blekko search engine service was discontinued.

Keywords: Rich Skrenta, Mike Markson, web search engine, slashtag search, curated search, anti-spam search, vertical search, Open Directory Project, DMOZ, IBM Watson acquisition, search filtering, human-curated search, search quality, content farms, information retrieval, search technology, SEO tools, algorithmic differentiation, trusted webpages, web crawling technology