Blingo Buzz: October 2005

Do you ever search for something and get way more results than you can possibly sort through? Maybe you should refine your search.

Scroll down to the bottom of your search results and click "Search within these results."

Here's how it works. When you search the Internet for "camera," Blingo looks at everything in its index to find pages that mention cameras. That's a lot of pages! But when you click "Search within these results" and enter "digital," Blingo will do another search, but this time it will look only at the pages you already found to see if any of them also contain the word "digital."

Cool, huh? You can keep refining your search until you find what you're looking for. Of course those of you who are power searchers know how to do this without clicking "Search within these results," but some people prefer a nice, clean way of narrowing their searches.

Try it! As we say in the search business, it's like refining oil but not as messy or aromatic.

We had some fun with this one. A Blingo meme has been going around the blogosphere. A meme is, well, it's just a trend that seems to ricochet around the Internet. Who knows where this one started.

The idea is to enter "your name needs" into Blingo or Google — but stick your own first name in there — and see the funny results. Here are a few amusing examples that people have posted to their blogs:

• Debbie needs ...
• Adelle needs ...
• April needs ...
• Ali needs ...

Of course we had to try it ourselves. It turns out that...

Frank needs wheels.
Frank needs sensitivity training.
Frank needs to grow a spine.
Frank needs you!

And Rob needs a job.
Rob needs a refresher as to the meaning of purjury.
Rob needs 1 demonstrator in each room.
Rob needs to have a tooth removed.

Actually Blingo needs you to try it with your own name. Click here and here to see the Blingo searches we used. Try your own. Post the results to your web site, if you have one.

Enjoy!

We know that Blingo sounds too good to be true — a search engine that returns some of its revenue to its users? Crazy. That's why we love to read reports from people who've finally been convinced. Check out this blog post:

For months, Golf Widow [one of Blingo's biggest fans] has been imploring us to join “Blingo” which is a Google-powered search engine .... I said, “no.”

But he continues:

Today, I went onto Blingo to search a user name from Buzz Net because I knew the user took it from Greek Mythology and I wanted to refresh my memory on that particular character. I won ten dollars for iTunes for myself and another ten dollars for Golf Widow.
(see the witty blog here)

Another recent winner has this to say:

Well, you know all those sites that if you use their search engine, or spam their links, etc that you could win prizes… Well most are of course spam and you never win, however I took a chance and signed up for Blingo.com. It looked okay. What they do is at random times through the day they pick winners who search. I’ve searched on it for about 5 days now and not won at all! However, at work this morning, i get a call from Melissa saying that she just won an IPOD Shuffle or a $100 Visa Gift Card. I was a little shocked. It was from blingo. She searched and won! What the hell? She wins and i don’t. My normal luck. However, on Blingo, for those on your friends list (ones your invite), if one of your friends wins, you win the same prize. So, she picked the $100 Visa Gift Card and i picked the IPOD Shuffle.
(see the blog here)

Congrats, to all of our winners! By the way, five days is not very long to be using Blingo. Most people don't win quite so quickly. At five days, you're still a newbie in our book. To those who haven't won, be patient. Over time your odds of winning are pretty good, but don't get frustrated if it doesn't happen immediately.

Have you seen our tips for winning?

From an iPod Shuffle winner that chose a Blingo Visa Gift Card (see the blog here):

Check it out...I got my Blingo VISA Card today :) $100 buck-a-roos. It took about 3 weeks to get here. I’m goin’ to the mall to spend it!

From another Blingo Visa Gift Card winner (see the blog here):

Cha Ching...Today I got my free Blingo Visa Gift Card in the mail.

And more quotes from around the blogosphere:

I won Blingo!! Really didn’t think I would and I was extremely shocked. It’s my default search engine on FireFox. I knew it wasn’t BS because my friend already won a VISA gift card and I got to chose between a movie ticket or a gift certificate for iTunes (picked iTunes). I’m pretty pleased :) Everyone should sign up; gift cards, ipods, playstations OH MY!
(see the blog here)

It really works...And yes, they really do send you one, and yes, a movie theater near you probably will take it. It’s awesome. That’s why you’re missing out if you aren’t using Blingo.
(see the blog here)

I was searching for “house training boxer puppies” this morning, and ended up winning a $25 VISA Gift Card through Blingo. Do you see how close I was to winning a damn iPod Nano? That would have seriously made my Monday a whole hell of a lot better.
(see the blog here)

Yep, I got my prize from Blingo today.
(see the blog with photo here)

OMG OMG!!! [from an Ipod Shuffle winner]
(see the blog here)

It works...Remember my ranting about Blingo a few weeks ago? My friend Katie signed up as my Blingo friend and then won me a $10 iTunes certificate. I just cashed it in and got a CD. It’s not a scam!
(see the blog here)