‘Kiddle’ – The New Child-Friendly Search Engine

A new child-friendly search engine called Kiddle has been launched this week. Kiddle is in no way affiliated with Google despite the heavy resemblance of the site to Google and being powered by a Google Custom Search bar.

Kiddle’s logo uses the same famous colour scheme as Google’s, with the only differences being the use of an outer space theme and a guard robot, who blocks any attempts to search ‘bad words’.

All terms which are searched in Kiddle are automatically filtered through Google safe search. Many of the results that appear for popular searches were handpicked and approved by the site’s editors.  After that, search results are displayed as follows:

• The first three results include safe sites and pages that are written specifically for kids.
• The next four results feature sites that include content written in simple language.
• The results appearing after that are written with adults in mind but still are filtered by Google Safe Search.

In order to make the search engine further child-friendly, Kiddle uses a large Arial font to “provide better readability for kids” and uses big thumbnails as their use makes it “easier to scan the results, differentiate between them, and click the most appropriate results to your query. Thumbnails serve as visual clues and are especially beneficial to kids as they don’t read as fast as adults.”

Kiddle also deletes their logs ever 24 hours and doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information, in order to protect the privacy of users.

There’s also a “site blocking request” form for parents to submit any inappropriate site found in Kiddle results to be blocked by Kiddle editors.

Searches for certain celebrities which could lead to adult content being displayed, such as Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton, are blocked from being searched although users have noted that results are shown for the likes of Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus, which could also lead to inappropriate content being displayed.

Sky News also found that a “search for a rabbit brings up a news story about a rabbit being killed by a Danish radio host.”

Try Kiddle out for yourself here.

These examples show that Kiddle have yet to perfect a completely child-friendly experience with some dangerous results slipping through the net, though it’s certainly safer for children than other search engines.

For website owners, the emergence of Kiddle does not require a change of tack when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as searches are powered by Google. It does, however, demonstrate the need for websites to be optimized for Google and showcases the ever-changing SEO landscape.

Matrix can optimize your website for search engines!