Blingo Becomes Useless

Well, I guess it had to happen. Blingo, which was previously my search engine of choice, has suddenly become crappy and useless.

They used to just show Google’s results, with their own ads, and with the incentive that you could win prizes just by using them. I’ve won two Fandango gift certificates over the years (which I never got around to using before they expired), and won $50 cash just a few weeks ago.

But now they’ve switched from Google results to a combination of Yahoo, Microsoft Live, and Ask results. They’re all randomly intermingled, and even have ads intermingled with the search results. From the sample search I just ran gave 20 results on the front page. In order, they are:

1. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
2. [Found on Windows Live]
3. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
4. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
5. [Found on Windows Live]
6. [Found on Windows Live]
7. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
8. [Found on Windows Live]
9. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
10. [Found on Windows Live]
11. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
12. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
13. [Found on Windows Live]
14. [Found on Windows Live]
15. [Found on Windows Live]
16. [Found on Windows Live]
17. [Found on Windows Live]
18. [Found on LookSmart]
19. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]
20. [Found on Ads by Yahoo!]

Almost half of the search results are ads that are mixed in with the real results. And naturally many of the ads aren’t related to what I was searching for. Come on, showing me a dating site in search results for something completely unrelated? In 2008? Get real.

These are unusable. Blingo overnight went from a good search engine — since it was just Google with the added bonus of winning prizes — to something that has to be one of the worst search engines in existence today.

Well done. I’d be shocked if their usage doesn’t drop like a rock after this. Who would keep using it at this point? Masochists and people desperately hoping to win a few bucks?

Assuming my results are the best expected case, since I do a ton of searches every day (only the first 10 searches each day are eligible for prizes), and have had Blingo as my default search engine in Firefox both at home and at work over the last few years, let’s see how much you can expect to win. $50 cash plus two Fandango gift certificates, let’s say $10 each. $70 over the two years that I’ve been using it (I checked, I first posted about Blingo two years ago, almost exactly, just one day off.)

That’s an expected income of just under $3 a month. And if you don’t count my recent $50 win, which suspiciously came just before these terrible changes, you’re only at 83 cents a month. And if you don’t get around to spending Fandango gift certificates (like me), you’re at $0 a month.

But even at $3 a month, that’s not enough to deal with a crappy search engine many times a day. I’d gladly pay $3 a month to not have to deal with that.

So long Blingo. It was fun while it lasted, but you blew it. You had a good thing going, and you ruined it. I don’t know if it was in your control, and you just wanted to flood the results with ads, or if Google wasn’t up for it any more and you had to switch anyway, but I’m done. So long, and thanks for all the Fandango.