Tuesday, April 5, 2011

I really liked Blekko for running complex searches and simplify


Fb Login

friends make search better!

when you log into blekko through FB connect, your friends automatically become part of your searches. As you search, blekko shows you the results your friends have liked through Facebook. Also search only the pages you and your friends have liked and sort results by the number of likes


How it works:

  1. Log in to blekko via Facebook Connect.
  2. After logging in, blekko automatically creates for you a slashtag called /likes. This slashtag includes sites you and your friends have "liked" through Facebook.
  3. From then on, the last line of every search result will show which of your friends liked each site.
  4. Also, you can:
    • search only sites you and your friends like by adding /likes to your search query. (i.e. music /likes)
    • sort results by the number of likes by clicking the sort icon to the right of /date at the top of the page
    • like any site directly from blekko by clicking the 'like' link under each search result title
    • search a specific friends likes by clicking their name in the search result.

This morning I was running database searches on prevalence and incidence rates of different diseases for a project. The searches started with the usual google>>google scholar >> pubmed >> embase and so on, when at one point I tried out creating slashtags on blekko (http://blekko.com), (see the attached snapshot). I think it's got a great potential to customize search to levels that we have not seen before. It streamlines searches and findings to unbelievable levels of sophistication. I'd be watching this space. I particularly liked the social aspect of the searches, and the powerful filtering capacities, as well as running and customizing "just what I need", not the millions of results to wade and filter through. It requires a little bit of plugging and understanding the process of using slashtags, but saves a lot of time in the end. Great stuff.

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