Kiddle, a Kids Safe Search Engine

Kiddle is a kid friendly safe search website that went viral, for the most part as a result of a few tweets from famous people mistaking Kiddle for a Google product. Their similar logo, font, and coloring scheme to Google's is most likely the fundamental reason why it was mistaken for Google Inc.

Kiddle has never associated themselves with Google and they also state on their website that "Kiddle is powered by Google Safe Search but is not affiliated with Google Inc."

At the point when Kiddle went viral, different News Agencies performed broad search tests on Kiddle to attempt to find imperfections. After our tests, we can affirm Kiddle executed not surprisingly with good results. We understand that no web filter is 100% ensured to filter out all explicit pictures or websites and if you search broadly enough and dig deep into the web, a tech savvy person will be able to get past most filters.

The truth of the matter is, the Internet is covered with a wide range of content. Some of it is helpful, some of it is amusing and some of it is adults-only. More and more websites and web pages are developed each and every minute, which gives children access to discover essentially anything online. They are also more than likely to stumble upon terrible sites.

Indeed, websites like Kiddle and DinoSearch with the same goals in mind are simply going to miss some adult sites. Kiddle and DinoSearch have good intentions of blocking adult content but in reality, there's no such thing as a "totally protected" kid's safe search engine, only ones that are "more protected." It's great to have search sites for kids available to you when a child begins to explore the internet, but it's not foolproof, and we should not expect it to be.

This is a great reminder to be more actively supervising kids when they are online. As we have said previously, safe search engines are not a substitute for supervising young children and teaching older children the lessons they require for a safer online experience.

Database of search terms and websites

Like DinoSearch, Kiddle maintains a database of inappropriate keywords and URL's to filter out unwanted adult websites to children. They have a keywords database that will have a robot say "oops, try again" if any bad words are attempted to be searched. They request that individuals submit any websites or keywords that get past their filter, so a team of editors can put a manual block in place.

How does keyword blocking help?

Let's say a child wants to image search for a female bear, and kids being kids swap the words around and type "bear female" in a search engine. However, they misspell bear and spell it bare. Now you have a child image searching for "bare female". This is just one example of many instances where an innocent search term in a non-filtered search engine could lead to disaster. This is where keyword and keyphrase filtering can help as it will block innocent search terms by kids who don't know any better.

Kiddle results page

The first three websites in Kiddle results are hand picked by Kiddle's editors to safeguard that results are appropriate for children. Kiddle state that the next four to seven website results will be kid friendly websites that are specifically written for children and easy for them to understand. Results after this will be websites that are well established websites (like DinoSearch) and are filtered by Google SafeSearch.

Kpedia and Kimages

Kpedia is a Kiddle encyclopedia which displays content from the free opensource MediaWiki database. The results are based on selected Wikipedia articles that have been rewritten for children to help them better understand the content.

Kimages are downloadable images from Kiddle encyclopedia, (Kpedia) and can be freely used for personal and educational purposes under a free sharing license.

Google SafeSearch

Working in conjunction with a keyword database is the power of Google Safe Search technology. This is a well and true method to help to reject undesirable adult related websites and is the same approach that DinoSearch has.

Kiddle acknowledges that sites are also hand-picked by their group of editors and are shown in the initial few pages of the Google results. This provides added safety however, kids may not get the most relevant results to their search queries because the selection of sites to search from is more narrow. There are also missed opportunities for valuable updated information from pages that are newly created.

Social Media

Both Kiddle and DinoSearch block chatroom and social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others from search results. Kids have plenty of time to access these kinds of sites when they are older and have a better understanding of the internet. Most social media sites like Facebook state that a child must be at least 13years old before they can create an account on Facebook. Youtube also have this policy in place, hence why they have been blocked from showing in our search results.

Help us to help kids

Being active is everything. This is what differentiates the good kid search sites from the bad. What do we mean? On the off chance that a website gets past our filters, we want to know about it ASAP. By actively updating our blocked website list and bad words database, we are able to block most adult content. Kiddle express that once contacted with an inappropriate website they will "take action within one business day". We contacted Kiddle to test their response times as we had found an inappropriate website for kids on their results page. True to their word, only a few hours after contact was made, they were able to block the website and reply to our website submission. This is what we like to see. DinoSearch likewise does a similar thing, however, we indicate inside 48hours of contact.

DinoVideo?

Kiddle has a video search feature that DinoSearch does not. After testing, it appears to work quite well with no Youtube links found. We discovered that the search results are only displaying from reputable sites like nationalgeographic.com. We have not had any requests to have video search enabled on DinoSearch but if we get enough feedback about it, then we will certainly look at adding this feature.

Please contact us if you would like a video feature added or for any other suggestions or comments.

Closing Comments

No matter how hard software and web developers try, there is no way that a kids search engine can 100 percent guarantee that it will block all inappropriate and offensive online content. Even a multi billion dollar corporate company like Google is unable to block bad sites and their website does state that, "SafeSearch isn't 100% accurate. But it can help you avoid explicit and inappropriate search results on your phone, tablet, or computer."

While there is a place in children's lives for web filtering tools, as they grow older, they will want the freedom to explore what all the internet has to offer as well as wanting more privacy. Therefore, education remains the most important thing you can do to help kids with online safety.

Some things to discuss with children to help with online safety would be what to do if they come across something that makes them feel uncomfortable or upset. Kids should not be afraid and feel the need to hide something they may have accidentally came across online. They should know that they can talk to an adult about it and it will be OK. Reassure kids that what they saw was not their fault and provide comfort and assurance. Let them know you are happy they came to you about it and talk to them about what they found.