1. From the Applications folder, open “Uninstall Genieo” and follow the instructions.
2. Close and re-open your browser. The search box should search the correct search engine now.

If this doesn’t work, please contact us at support@blekko.com.

blekko’s slashtags come in two major groups — algorithmic and curated. Algorithmic slashtags can change the sort order, call out to 3rd parties for more information, and provide shortcuts to all parts of blekko’s user interface.

Sorting and Selecting

/date – sorts dated pages by date.
Examples:
kardashian /date=2006
tiger woods /date=2005-2006
democratic party /date=”jan 23, 2007″
inflation /date=”jan 1975-feb 1975″

Sorting the Internet by date is a problem for relevance — webpages either are in the result or they aren’t, so it’s difficult to get rid of less-relevant pages in the result. blekko automatically attempts to show only more relevant pages if there are a lot of results; to defeat this algorithm and always show all results, add /more to your query. (Another way to improve relevance is to combine /date with a curated slashtag.)

Note that only pages with dates on them (news articles, blogs, etc) are included in date-sorted or date-selected results. We do not try to guess the date of a page based on when we first crawled it.

Some curated slashtags default to sorting by date instead of by relevance. /topnews is an example: obama /topnews

/daterange, /dr – select a range of dated pages, sort by relevance.
Examples:
kardashian /dr=2011
tiger woods /dr=2005-2006
democratic party /dr=”jan 23, 2007″
inflation /dr=”jan 1975-feb 1975″

/fastdate – the reverse of /date /more. Higher quality, never goes very far back in time.
Example:
obama /fastdate

/edu – all .edu sites (see also the /colleges slashtag)
Examples:
hayek /edu
industrial design /colleges

/gov – government sites. May behave differently depending on ip address (US vs. non-US)
Example:
1099 /gov

/blog, /blogs – looks for blog software (blogspot, wordpress, etc. Matches some news websites.)
/forum, /forums – looks for forum postings {not very good yet}
/people – looks for biographies/resumes {not very good yet}

/relevance – forces a relevance search. Use with slashtags that default to date sort.
Example:
kardashian /gossip /relevance — /gossip defaults to a date sort

/web – suppresses auto-slashtags
Example:
kardashian /web — suppresses auto-boost of /gossip slashtag

/foo.com – similar to site:foo.com. You can also negate it: -/foo.com
/wp, /wiki, /wikipedia – shortcuts to /wikipedia.org

/tags – shortcut to display the list of high-quality curated slashtags

RSS feed examples

The /rss slashtag creates a RSS feed from any search result, suitable for viewing in your favorite RSS feed reader. You can also receive these as emails using any rss to email converter, for example https://www.feedmyinbox.com/.

RSS feeds work best with date-sorted results. Date-sorted results often have relevance problems:

Too many results:
obama /date

Fewer results:
obama /fastdate

Curate it:
obama /topnews /date

Fewer:
obama /topnews /fastdate

Some irrelevant results:
tiger woods /date

Add quotes to narrow:
“tiger woods” /date

Curate it:
“tiger woods” /golf /date

Curate it a different way:
“tiger woods” /gossip /date

Narrow that one:
“tiger woods” /gossip /fastdate

Get rid of the irrelevant stuff:
“tiger woods” /fastdate /gossip -Community

Turn the above examples into rss feeds by adding /rss like so:
“tiger woods” /fastdate /gossip -Community /rss

You can use your personal slashtags (e.g. /greg/topnews) in rss feeds if you give the full name of the slashtag including your username. You usually can’t use private slashtags in rss feeds because the rss feed reader isn’t logged in.

Here’s a small list of curated slashtags which you might find useful for rss feeds: /topnews, /politics, /tech, /gossip, /seoblogs, /fashion, /science, /sports. You can also look over
the full list of curated slashtags for ideas.

Generic 3rd party and Informational APIs

/airport
/appsearch – search for smartphone apps (chomp)
/calendar, /calender – Example: mlk day /calendar
/define, /definition
/flight, /flights – [sfo to jfk /flights]
/flightstatus – [ua1152 /flightstatus]
/image, /images
/map, /maps
/movies
/shop, /shopping
/stock, /ticker
/traffic
/weather
/video

Specific 3rd party APIs

/alpha – wolfram alpha
/amazon
/carfax
/chomp – application search
/citysearch
/ebay
/fedex
/flickr
/truveo
/twitter
/ups
/usps
/vin – carfax report for a Vehicle Identification Number
/wolfram – wolfram alpha
/wolframalpha – wolfram alpha
/yandex – yandex search engine
/yelp
/youtube

SEO related things

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. You must be logged in to use these. All of this data is also available by clicking on the “seo” link next to any result.

/adsense – both [/adsense=123456] and [tech crunch /adsense]
/compare – SEO option to compare two sites
/domainduptext – SEO
/domainlinks – SEO
/domainreport – SEO
/domain – SEO
/duptext – SEO
/explain – SEO
/inbound – SEO
/internal – SEO
/ip=1.2.3.4 – SEO
/link, /links – who links to this [/link=foo.com]
/outbound – SEO
/rank – SEO
/sections – SEO
/seo – SEO
/sitepages – shows URLS from that site
/urlcheck – SEO
/urlseo – SEO
/usage – static page
/visualize – SEO

Blekko website shortcuts

/add – add an URL to a tag
/cache – shows cached page
/edit – edits slashtag
/editme – edits profile
/geoip – city based on ip
/json – renders in json (machine readable) (email apiauth@blekko.com for details)
/login
/logout
/me – user profile
/monte – 3 engine monte game
/monty – monte
/profile – same as user
/randquery – random query
/randqueryst – random query with random slash tag
/rss – render in rss (machine readable)
/source – shows html source from page
/user – profile
/view – looks at slashtag
/webgrep – webgrepper
/whoami – shows user page

It is our goal to serve results for all queries from our own index. Our current index size sits at around 4 billion pages.  While it grows every day, the web is much larger than this.  As a result, sometimes we turn to third parties to help us return the best results. You can access some of these third party results directly by using specific slashtags, such as /twitter, /facebook, and /bing. But just like we do with our own slashtags, we sometimes blend them in to enhance the search experience.

Third Party APIs that we use include the usual suspects that you would expect to see: Amazon, Bing, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter; as well as more specialized sites such as Carfax, FedEx, Indeed, Rotten Tomatoes, Truveo, and USPS.

We will continue to seek out the best ways to improve the search experience on blekko. But rest assured that the heart of blekko will always be its own index.

(For help on uninstalling the search bar, please click here.)

Here are instructions for changing some of those settings manually.

To change your homepage:

First, go to the URL of the page you want to be your home page. Here are some common homepages: Google, Comcast, MSN, Yahoo!, AOL. If you would like one of those to be your homepage, click on the link. If you need help finding your homepage, please email us at support@blekko.com. While you are on the page that you’d like to be your homepage, follow these instructions.

1. Click on the down arrow next to Tools in the upper right hand corner of your browser.
2. Click on “Internet Options”. This will bring up a pop-up.
3. Click on the “General” Tab.
4. The very top section says “Home page” and is for changing your homepage.
5. Delete http://blekko.com from that area.
6. Click on “Use current” to set the URL you are on as your homepage.
7. Click on “OK” on the bottom of the pop-up. This should close the pop-up.
8. Close your browser.
9. Re-open your browser.

To change your default search engine to Google:

1. Click on the down arrow next to the magnifying glass icon in the default search box in the upper right hand corner of your browser.
2. Click on “Find More Providers”
3. You’ll be in a page called the “Internet Explorer Gallery” that lists search engines you can choose to add to your IE. Scroll down and click on “Google Search”.
4. Click on the button that says “Add to Internet Explorer”
5. This will bring up a pop-up asking if you want to add “Google” as a search provider. Check the box that says “Make this my default search provider” and click on “Add”.
6. Google should now be showing as your default search provider in the search box.

(For help on uninstalling the search bar, please click here.)

Here are instructions for changing these settings manually.

To change your homepage:

1. Click on the wrench icon to the right of the address bar. This should be the wrench for Chrome and not for any toolbar.
2. A pop-up will appear. Scroll down and click on “Settings.”
3. Click on the “Basics” tab on the left hand side.
4. In the section marked “Home page” make sure the radio button is checked for “Open this page:” (if you want New Tab page instead, click that radio button and skip to step 5)
5. Enter the URL of the homepage you’d like to use. Some common homepages are Google: http://www.google.com, Comcast: http://xfinity.comcast.net/, MSN: http://www.msn.com/, Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com/, AOL: AOL. If you need help finding your homepage, please email us at support@blekko.com.
6. Close your browser.
7. Re-open your browser.

To change your default search engine:

For PC/Windows:
1. Click on the wrench in the right hand side. This should be the wrench for Chrome and not any toolbar.
2. Click on “Options.” Make sure you are in the “Basics” tab.
3. In the Search part of the page, choose the search engine from the dropdown that you would like to use.
4. Searching in the address bar should use the search engine you chose now.

For Mac:
1. Go to Chrome -> Preferences.
2. Make sure you are in the “Basics” tab.
3. In the Search part of the page, choose the search engine from the dropdown that you would like to use.
4. Searching in the address bar should use the search engine you chose now.

If you have Windows, please check for a program to remove in your control panel as follows:
1. Completely close your browsers.

2. Then check in Control Panel (Programs or Add/Remove Programs) for a program called “Blekko” or “Blekko Spam Free Search Bar” or “Spam Free Search Bar” and uninstall it.

3. Once the program is uninstalled, the toolbar will be gone, but you will still see blekko when you open your browser because some of your browser settings (such as homepage and default search engine) will have changed as well. Here are instructions for changing those settings back in IE (Internet Explorer), Firefox, and Chrome.

4. Re-open your browser. You might need to reboot your computer as well.

If you have any questions or problems with uninstalling the Search Bar, please contact us at support@blekko.com.

At blekko we believe in transparency. We created the web search bill of rights to explain our outlook.

Web search bill of rights:

1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

For example, when you search on diabetes /health, you are searching a set of trusted sites such as nih.gov, cdc.gov, webmd.com, and more. Content farms and spam sites are banished entirely.

blekko has created hundreds of slashtags that are being curated by experts across the web. You can search with these slashtags or create your own.