Wow! Another Search Engine

I must admit, I am still a Google-girl.  I have tried Bing, but I keep going back to what seems most familiar and most effective. 

According to an article in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, “A New Search Engine, Where Less is More,” there is now another option.  At first, I was a little skeptical.  If Google is working, why should I venture out of my comfort zone?  So, I decided to do two things:  First, I read the article; then I tried it myself.

The article talked about the new search engine, Blekko, available to the public on November 1.  As I started to read the article, I could not help but wonder why this one would be different.  According to Ms. Miller, this search engine is geared to show only those results deems as most useful or trustworthy.  Rich Skrenta, Blekko co-founder, had one goal in mind:  to clean up the Web.  Now, I am thinking how much of a difference this could make in my academic career, so I continued to read.  This search engine is going to use “slashtags” to access more refined lists which will eliminate what Mr. Skrenta called “content farms” like eHow.  So far, so good, so I read further.  This engine promises to execute vertical searches to provide the most complete list possible.  Ms. Miller used the following example:  if you search for “pregnancy tips” using both Blekko and Google, the results will be very different; in Blekko, your results will focus on government sites, nonprofit sites, and well-know parenting sites; however, in Google, your results will connect you will some similar sites, but will also bring to OfficialDating Resource.com.  I have been there before.  For a prior position, I did a search looking for statistics for teen pregnancy.  In addition to the valuable information, I was given several sites offering nude photos of naked pregnant teens.  With that said, I decided to try Blekko.

For this week’s Wiki, I decided to give Blekko a whirl.  Although the list was short, and by some standards considered concise, I found it to be a little lacking completeness; I was even given a few eHow sites. Although, I found some interesting information, but I still retreated to Google to finish my search. 

I am going to attribute this to youth; I will check back shortly, and give Blekko it another try.  Let me know what you think.