Blekko Unveils Publisher Tools That Offer Link Transparency, Customized Search

March 4, 2011

Tools

Blekko’s Live Link Roll Assures that SEO Is Being Done By the Rules; Embeddable Search Box Helps Publishers Create Search Verticals

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blekko, the new search engine that is using human curation to eliminate spam from search results, today announced its suite of cool new publisher tools. Publishers can now visit Blekkogear, the one-stop-shop for free Blekko tools, and utilize everything from the new Live Link Roll to a Blekko Embeddable Search Box.

The Blekko Link Roll is an embeddable site widget that shows links to a site as they happen in real time. Links in many respects are the Internet’s badge of honor, an external validation of a site by the linking party. The Blekko Link Roll provides publishers an opportunity to show off the various links their content is generating, as these links occur in real time.

As links play such an important role in SEO, the link widget also allows sites to provide the world link transparency. Recently, some top brands ended up in the headlines because it was discovered that vendors may have paid for links to sites in order to fool search engines into higher ranking.

In addition to the link widget, Blekko is offering sites an Embeddable Search Box for their site. Site owners can create a customized search experience by embedding a Blekko powered vertical search engine that is tailored to specific content and specific sites. For instance, tech sites can provide users a search experience that taps into only content from the top tech sources. The goal is to allow publishers to curate the search sources based on their own expertise in order to return spam-free results on a specific category.

“Web publishers know a lot about where their readers can find the best content and which sites offer the best information,” said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Blekko. “Our search box lets publishers build a customized, vertical search engine that will return little to no spam because the search is limited to sources the publishers trust.”

The Blekko publisher tool package includes:

The Live Link Roll or Inbound Link Widget, showing publishers who is linking to their site and who they are being linked to
Embedded Search Box with customized vertical search
SEO Toolbar, allowing users to add slashtags from any site, mark spam and view SEO data in real time
Default search page
as well as easy access to RSS feeds

Blekko launched in November promising to create a new kind of search experience that would enlist human editors in its effort to eliminate spam and personalize search. Since then, the company has taken dramatic steps to clean up the swampy web. Most recently, Blekko has partnered with Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site built by programmers for programmers, in order to improve and maintain programming-related slashtags, curating the very best programming search verticals.

In true Blekko fashion, free T-Shirts are being offered to those who check out the Blekko tools on their webpage.

About Blekko

Blekko was founded in 2007 to pursue innovation in search. The company has raised $24 million since its founding in 2007 from US Venture Partners and CMEA Capital, as well as leading angel investors including Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Jeff Clavier, and Marc Andreessen. Blekko has 25 employees, including former Google and Yahoo! Search engineers.