Like their parents and teachers, most kids use Google to find their way online. But there are plenty of great search engines made especially for children out there. Here is a list of the top 5 search engines for kids

What to look for

These child friendly search engines all search safe content, often indexes of content of particular interest to children, so you know the kids don’t stumble upon unsavory content.

A great search engine for kids also has a user interface that is easy to navigate and that appeals to children. This is my favorite part of researching search engines for children: You get to see innovative and user friendly search interfaces and neat presentation of search results. And the winners are:

Ask Kids

Ask Kids is fun to use, easy to navigate and with plenty of useful features. The search page looks like a lined note book. It is neat and uncluttered.

In addition to the prominent search box, there are links to five specialized search tools: Schoolhouse, movies, games, videos and images. For a kid researching a school assignment, a regular search returns universal results: Images, videos, definitions and more in addition to the regular search results.

For most searches, Ask Kids will present a smart search result at the top of the page, which provides an image, a definition and help to refine your search. In the left column, there are links to narrow or expand the search.

Ask Kids has most of the bells and whistles that the regular Ask search engine offers, but presented in a simplified and safe way. A great tool!

Boolify

Children today need to learn how to sift through vast quantities of information. Boolify is a search engine and a tool for learning or teaching how to sift. It offers an easy to use tool to help model Boolean operators.

Boolify does this though a drag and drop interface. The elements of any search phrase (word, and, not, or) are available as puzzle peaces . You start by dragging the word piece into the search field to add the first term. Then you drag a moderator (AND or OR) next to the search term to expand the query.

Search results appear below the search field as the first word is added and the results are updated on the fly every time you modify the query. The process is easy to grasp and even though the primary audience of Boolify is elementary and middle school children, it is certainly relevant for others, including adults.

Quintura Kids

Quintura Kids is based on the visual search engine Quintura and has its very own take on search.

When you enter a query, Quintura Kids presents you with a list of five links: Just the web page title and the URL.

If these are not what you were looking for, a search cloud hovers above: Your search term is highlighted in the middle of related terms. As you point your mouse to the terms in the cloud, Quintura modifies your query and the search results. Even though this might not be as intuitive as Boolify, it is easy to understand how Quintura Kids works.

Like Ask Kids, Quintura for Kids offers preset search categories: Movies, music, sports, TV and games. These categories provide you with the same top 5 search results and a search cloud to explore the topic.

StudySearch

StudySearch is based on a customised Google search engine developed for Australian Primary and Secondary school students.

The customized Google search is combined with a growing database of educational websites. When a search is done, those sites get priority in the search results. The student is still doing a full Google search (with SafeSearch activated) but the results are tuned to display sites that are more relevant.

The sites in the database are contributed by Australian teachers, librarians and site volunteers. These sites are selected based on their content and ease of navigation.

There are separate search pages for primary school and secondary school to provide content suited for each age group. Not much is done in the presentation of the search results. You get the standard list of links, but the quality and suitability of the links is safeguarded.

KidRex

KidRex is another Google Custom Search engine using Google SafeSearch technology. In addition, KidRex maintains its own database of inappropriate websites and keywords. Searches emphasize kid-related webpages.

KidRex has the coolest user interface. The search page is a colorful drawing of a search box guarded by a dinosaur. Like Google’s search page, there is no doubt where to put the query and how to proceed. This search page is suitable for small children.

Unfortunately, the search results are not equally easy to use. Once again we get the ubiquitous list of ten links. This is remedied to some extent by the fact that the search results in my test searches are highly relevant.

More search tools for kids

Pandia Kids & Teens has more search engines for kids and tools to help with homework and more.

photo credit: iwannt