Ask Kids – A search engine worth checking out

Keeping your kids away from inappropriate web content is far from easy. Even innocent searches can produce results that you’d rather your child not see. That’s where Ask Kids can help. According to their website:

“Each web site in the Ask Kids core search index was selected by the Ask.com editorial team as child-appropriate or as a relevant and practical site for reference and learning. Ask’s proprietary search algorithm then identified communities and collections of web sites linked to the core list, and filtered those to remove adult content.”

Ask Kids  is run by Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves, which is one of the major search engines. And it seems to work pretty well. In my testing, Ask Kids returned a broad range of educational content while completely blocking any adult content. That said, the site does seem to block some legitimate content – for example, you’ll not find any information about our feathered friend the blue tit through Ask Kids (unless you look for it by its Latin name, Cyanistes caeruleus!).  But no web filter is perfect and many parents will consider the occasional anomaly to be small price to pay for some added peace of mind.

Ask Kids is well designed and makes it easy for kids to search. For example, search “Bell Canada” and you’ll see this:

The buttons on the left make it easy for kids to condense or expand the scope of their search and also provides them with some suggestions as to possible search terms of which they may not have thought. Ask also has a Schoolhouse which helps kids find information about specific subjects.

If you’re looking for a child-friendly search engine with an academic bias, Ask Kids is certainly worth checking out.