Blekko has secured a new $30 million investment from a mix of investors (some old, some new), including Russian search engine Yandex. CEO Rich Skrenta tells WebProNews, “Money will be used to expand and grow the service – hiring, infrastructure, marketing, etc.”
When asked if Blekko intends to expand into areas beyond search, he simply said, “We are focused on delivering great, spam-free search results.”
Earlier this month, Blekko did launch an analytics tool called Web Grepper.
Skrenta said that he wanted Blekko to be the “third” search engine (along with Google and Bing) back when it launched. I don’t know that it’s very widely considered that yet, but the investment can’t hurt the company’s quest to get there, especially if they will indeed remained focused on search.
Of course, Yahoo might have something to say about that “third search engine” thing. While it does use Bing to power its back-end, the company has been very vocal about how seriously it still takes search. Last week, they said they’re ready for a “search fight”. I don’t think Blekko was their main concern though.