My Facebook news feed was blowing up this morning about a brand new kids safe web search site called Kiddle. I was definitely interested, especially since most of the posts claimed that Google created it… yet I didn’t see any real Google branding. So, I looked into it, and here’s what I’ve discovered.
First… NO Kiddle is NOT created by Google. Kiddle is it’s own company, and the company is not owned by or affiliated with Google. They DO piggy back off of Google’s Safe Search to show results. Which leads you to the fact that you could likely get the same results by just turning on Google Safe Search. BUT….
There ARE things in place and editors curating the content from Google Safe Search, so you actually will likely NOT get the exact same results, because of this added layer in their results. Here is how they rank their results…
I’ll have to say, I’ve been impressed with the search engine so far. It has image results too, which is nice, since that’s most of what my kids do on Google (search for pictures of dragons and Mickey Mouse and what not). It also has blocks so you can’t search for anything “bad”. I tried my luck with something somewhat benign and was shot down (thankfully)
I always say that the more hoops that children need to jump through to get to the “bad stuff” the better. I would never rely on the safety of just ONE layer (such as a hardware filter on your network, or a search engine that claims to be safe). Keep on adding those layers and the chances that your child will accidentally come across things that are inappropriate for them to see will get smaller and smaller. Although, they will never completely go away. Constant communication with your children about the things that are dangerous out there is essential.
I will definitely be switching out my kid’s web search with this one, for sure. Just make sure to not rely completely on something like this to protect your kids!
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