Blekko Partners With MerchantCircle On Small Business Search

Blekko, the search engine that is using human curation to reduce spam in search results, and MerchantCircle, an online network of local business owners, announced a partnership today to remove spam for users searching for small business resources.

MerchantCircle’s community of 1.6 million members will help improve small business search results by curating the new slashtag "/smallbusiness" so that it returns results from trusted resources that are free of spam.

As a result of the partnership, blekko will also provide ongoing analysis of content and pages created by MerchantCircle’s local members to ensure this content meets quality standards, does not contain spam and is free of unscrupulous inbound links.

Search vertical editors identify and submit web pages that contain the highest quality content from the most trusted sources. All submissions and recommendations from editors are reviewed by blekko before changes are implemented that would impact search results. All users can continue to edit any category they choose without permission from search vertical editors.

"The MerchantCircle community can help ensure that small business searches on blekko deliver the best of what’s available on the web, no small feat today given the explosion of spam across almost every search category," said Rich Skrenta, CEO of blekko.

"This collaboration allows blekko to tap into the knowledge of small business owners, who are forced to compete in search with professional SEO wizards who want to get in the way of good information."