Genealogy Slashtags

There is a new search engine on the block with a strange name – Blekko.  Then again Google was once thought to be a strange name.

Blekko’s claim to fame is being able to search ‘crowdsourced slashtags‘.   Slashtags are built in search tags such as /blogs or /date or /map or /calendar.  

I was interested to see how this would work with my favourite topic: genealogy. 

Here are the slashtags I tried on Blekko and the results.

Slashtag Search Term:

genealogy/people

Top 3 results: (results could have a Canadian bias, due to my location)

Dick Eastman – Meet Dick Eastman in Person

Leland Meitzler – Genealogy Blog

Muhammed Ali – Genealogy.com – Ancestry of Muhammad Ali

Slashtag Search Term

genealogy/blog

Top 3 results: 

Huntington – www.redneckrealities.com   (I was expecting geneabloggers not rednecks :))

Cambridge police acted ‘stupidly’ – Ben Smith – Comments (1311 – Obama –  (another ???)

OGS Conference 2010  (okay…bingo…this is the Ontario Genealogical Society….but the rest? Where did they come from?)

Slashtag Search Term

surname/genealogy

Top 3 results: 

Surname Search – Instructions – Surnames – GenForum

SURNAME LISTS – Surnames Lists

Glossary of Surname Meanings & Origins

I also searched a couple of my surnames and locations and found the usual sites (mostly me posting on forums).

Blekko can give tags, seo and other info about a website.  Will it be useful for genealogy?  Probably.  A new search engine might give you different results.

Will Blekko become a verb like Google?  Only time will tell.