Today saw the long anticipated launch of Blekko – a new search engine thats been in the works for 2.5 years.
This is not an extensive post on the features that Blekko has. For that check out these posts by techcrunch and mashable.
Two things set blekko apart:
1) users have tools to do new types of searches, using slashtags (/date) to filter and sort results
2) users have unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that determine relevancy
This post focusses on the second, and gives you a quick summary of how you can use Blekko for your SEO research.
For a detailed summary of all the SEO features, check out this post by Aaron Wall and this one on search engine land.
Note that Blekko is still in beta, and that it does not replicate google results. Rankings and data from Blekko can therefore differ from Google.
1. Analyse the inbound links to your site
Using your domain with the slashtag /inbound in the search gives your a wealth of backlink data. If you click on the graph link it will show you a bunch of helpfull graphs:
- inbound links by domain & ip
- included & excluded inbound links
- inbound links by year
- inbound links by month
Below the various graphs it shows you the table with all the backlinks to your domain. You can sort by rank, to see the most powerful sites on top, and highlight the anchor text used and whether the link is a nofollow link.
The other slashtag to use here is /urlseo which gives a great summary, in particular the backlink breakdown by %piechart and the anchor quality.
2. Review the competition
The second great SEO feature of Blekko is the /rank slashtag. There are different ways to view the data, starting from simple to complex.
First it will show you the sites ranked for the keyword, and whether the keyword is included in the domain (D), anchor text to the site (A), title (T), or URL (U).
By clicking on the more detail link you will see the same characteristics of the pages that rank including a bunch of others. For SEO and Internet Marketing, the most useful ones are:
- anch – is the target keyword in the anchor text to the page?
- title – does the page title include the keyword phrase
- adsense – Does the site use adsense?
3. Compare yourself to the competition
To compare a site to your own, enter your domain and add the /compare slashtag. Then just add one of your competitor domains to the second domain field.
This will show you a couple of nice graphs. But the really valuable information is in the inbound links table below. It basically shows you which top domains are providing links to your competitor but not to you.
Conclusion
Blekko is sofar looking to be an awsome tool. I have not compared the quality of the search results to google yet, but I am sure someone else online will be blogging about this soon.
Loads of potential!
What do you think? Have you tried blekko?
