If you have ever worried about what you child is searching for online, there is a new internet guard dog on patrol that promises to keep kids safe.
Kiddle.co is a child-friendly search engine that is powered by Google’s safe search function.
While it looks like Google – with the same web, image, news and video search functions – the colourful space theme makes it slightly more appealing to kids.
Kiddle’s search results are hand-picked by the site’s editors, to ensure they don’t stumble on anything inappropriate.
The first one to three results will always be curated by the site’s editors, pulling from safe sites written specifically for children, while the next few options will be sites that use easy-to-understand language to make it simple for children to absorb information.
The rest of the options are tailored to adults and harder for kids to understand, but still filtered through Google’s safe search.
It uses big thumbnail pictures, making it easier to scan the results and the images act as clues for children – who don’t read as fast as adults, and the website’s logs are cleared every 24 hours so no personal information is stored.
There are a few limitations of the search function however, which only proves the reach of the safety measures. For example, a search for “the All Blacks” was met with an angry robot telling us: “oops, looks like your query contained some bad words. Please try again!”
And if your child wants to learn more about Miley Cyrus, the image search ensures there are no inappropriate twerking surprises for young eyes.
