Blekko, the shiny new search engine that is taking on Google, is getting into product search today with the launch of a new vertical for holiday shopping. As you may have heard, the recently launched search engine differentiates itself from Google by giving users tools to do new types of searches that they can’t do elsewhere.The search engine offers unique query refinement tools to human editors called Slashtags (i.e. /news or /date or /amazon or /blogs) to filter results to what you are looking for (you can read our full review of the platform here).
Blekko’s newly created search vertical, aptly called /safeshop, includes only human selected shopping sites and is designed to thwart spammers and malware distributors. So users can now just add /safeshop to any search to search for retail products on the web, effectively filtering out any rogue or untrusted retailers who may offer a poor experience for online shoppers.
With the sales from online shopping expected hit $32.4 billion this season, more consumers will be flocking to search engines to look for deals and gifts. Google recently upgraded its product search and even launched a fashion-focused vertical called Boutiques.
For a search engine that is going head to head with Google and Bing, Blekko has been steadily gaining traction in its first month open to the public, with more than 1 million queries created per day and more than 30,000 slashtags created in the first week.
Last week, Blekko announced a partnership with fellow search engine DuckDuckGo to power search results for the latter. DuckDuckGo will also provide its Zero-Click Info summaries on a site by site basis.
Blekko is a search company founded by Rich Skrenta and his core team from previous company Topix and Netscape’s Open Directory. Blekko was founded halfway through 2007 and has already earned itself an angel round from Baseline Ventures and two ex-Googlers.
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