Children's search engines; 13 reviewed and assessed

Safer Internet Day is taking place on February 5th this year, and the details are all on their website. I thought that I'd take a look at a few children's search engines as a result, just to see if there are that are worth using. I did a few searches designed to trip them up, and came up with some startling conclusions - mainly that most of them either return no results or incorrect ones - one or two disasterously so. I really wasn't taken with any of them to be honest - my conclusion is that I think the best way to search the internet with a child is to do it with them, assess the value of their search and the sites that they find, and reassure them if they find material that's not very nice. I particularly think that it's worth getting librarians, and in particular school librarians involved if you possibly can.

Comments

[Joshua Schmidt]

Didnt know there was thing such as 'Childrens search engine'. I think some of these are again linked with Google. For example searchypants.. I just searched for games.. and it showed results pulled out from Google. Not sure how they differ other than providing safe search results.