Search Engines for Kids

Search Engines and Kids' Safety

Regular search engines can sometimes bring up graphic or explicit material even with unrelated searches. As a precaution, many parents choose to use filters and blockers on standard search engines. There are some very high quality free filters, such as K-9 Web Protection that can block harmful sites.

Standard search engines, however, yield thousands - and sometimes millions- of results for a search. This can be overwhelming and frustrating for a child, whether she is looking up information for a school project or just wants to play an online game. Search engines and Web guides for children help solve this problem with interfaces and tools that are fun, often educational, and child friendly. Parents should, however, continue to monitor their child's Internet use even with a search engine designed for a child. Searches on a child-oriented search engine may result in inappropriate results, so parents should still have a good filter installed and be aware of their child's Internet activity.

Popular Search Engines for Kids

Below are some of the most popular search engines for kids and a bit about their feaures.

Yahoo Kids

Yahoo is a leading search engine, and its Yahooligans, or Yahoo for Kids, division offers both a search engine and a Web guide. Kids can look up topics using the search bar at the top of the page or browse subjects in the guide. Searches bring up results in three categories: results for sites approved by Yahoo Kids, results in the topic directory, and results on the general web. The Web guide portion includes educational and study topics; popular kids movies, bands, and television shows (including video clips); Yahooligans games; sports; news for kids; and an exclusive 'Ask Earl' kids area where kids can ask real questions and get answers.

AOL Kids

AOL Kids, also known as KOL, is similar to Yahoo Kids in that it is both a Web guide and search engine. Search results are limited and appear to be from among the pre-selected sites approved for KOL. Browsable topics include kid media, pets, games, sports, and style. KOL Jr., a preschool Web guide, is also available.

Ask for Kids

Ask for Kids, formerly known as Ask Jeeves for Kids, is another popular search engine. This search engine is unique in its natural language technology. When children look up terms, the ask program converts their topics into question form and returns the most relevant results. The number of results is very manageable for children to use. Although they have far fewer 'guide' features than Yahoo or KOL, Ask for Kids has several topic resources, such as fun and games, news, dictionary, and academic subject links.

Kids Click

Kids Click is a search engine developed by a team of librarians for children. Over six hundred subjects can be browsed alphabetically, or kids can simply type in what they want to look up in the search bar and results will appear from pre-selected sites. A great feature of this search engine is that there are notations below the search results regarding illustrations, reading level, and broad subject category. This is perfect to help find age-appropriate sites and information for school.

Kid Friendly Internet Browsers

In addition to free search engines for kids online, there are also some downloadable that offer only pre-selected, kid friendly sites. These kid-friendly browsers are available in both free and subscription versions and may offer more customizable features than online kids search engines, and they may offer additional safety because they can only access approved sites. Be sure to read all the information about any download to be certain you don't end up with unwanted advertisements or other annoyances.

Kid-safe browsers that allow children to do searches with results from pre-selected sites include:

• Kid Rocket is a child-safe browser that is adware and spyware free. This standalone application allows your children to search from among many fun and educational sites.

• Buddy Browser is also spyware and adware free. Kids can do safe searches with results from teacher and educator approved sites or browse the topic icons for games, sports, and more.

• McGruff Browser: The crime watchdog has partnered with Children's Educational Network to create a browser that offers access to over ten thousand pre-approved and child-friendly web sites.

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