Search Engines

Major Children's Guides & Directories

The kid-safe directories below use human beings to filter out sites that might be considered objectionable for viewing by children.

Ask Jeeves For Kids
http://www.ajkids.com/

Ask Jeeves is a unique service where you enter a question, and Ask Jeeves tries to point you to the right web page that provides an answer. At Ask Jeeves For Kids, answers have been vetted for appropriateness. Also, if Ask Jeeves cannot answer a question, it pulls results from various search engines in its metacrawler mode. At Ask Jeeves For Kids, no site that is on the CyberPatrol block list is supposed to be listed.

KidsClick!
http://www.kidsclick.org/

Backed by librarians, KidsClick lists about 5,000 web sites in various categories.

Looksmart's Kids Directory
http://search.netnanny.com/?pi=nnh3&ch=kids

The Kids Directory is a listing of over 20,000 kid friendly websites that were hand picked by employees of Looksmart subsidiary Net Nanny and vetted for quality. Looksmart also offers a safe search of the entire web, using Net Nanny software to filter Wisenut search results, as well as a free toolbar that uses the same service.

Yahooligans
http://www.yahooligans.com/

Yahoo for kids, designed for ages 7 to 12. Sites are hand-picked to be appropriate for children. Also, unlike normal Yahoo, searches will not bring back matched found by crawling the web, if there is no match from within the Yahooligan listings. This prevents possibly objectionable sites from slipping onto the screen. Additionally, adult-oriented banner advertising will not appear within the service. Yahooligans is the oldest major directory for children, launched in March 1996.

Other Children's Search Engines

ALA Great Web Site for Kids
http://www.ala.org/greatsites

An organized directory of sites selected by members of the American Library Association using rigorous evaluation guidelines to assure high quality content, authority and "strength of character."

Awesome Library
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/

Over 14,000 sites have been classified into a directory, specifically organized for teachers, students and parents. Information can be found by browsing or searching.

Diddabdoo
http://www.dibdabdoo.com/

Billed as an ad free, non-commercial directory of web sites designed for child-safe searching.

Education World
http://www.education-world.com/

Over 500,000 sites of interest to educators. Browsable or searchable, with the ability to narrow in by appropriate grade level. Launched in spring 1996.

Fact Monster
http://www.factmonster.com/

Reference provider Information Please produces this site which provides facts and information oriented around the needs of children.

Family Source
http://www.family-source.com/

This focused crawler-based service has indexed nearly 1 million kid-friendly URLs.

FirstGov for Kids
http://www.kids.gov/

From the U.S. Federal Citizen Information Center, this directory provides links to government-related kids' sites along with some of the best kids' sites from other organizations, grouped by subject.

Kids Search Tools
http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm

Search a variety of kid-safe search engines from a single page.

SearchEdu.com
http://www.searchedu.com/

Index of pages built by crawling education web sites.

Teach-nology.com
http://www.teach-nology.com/

Directory of web sites for teachers and educators.

TekMom's Search Tools for Students
http://www.tekmom.com/search/

All-in-one search page for kid search sites and research resources.

ThinkQuest Library
http://www.thinkquest.org/library/

A free educational resource featuring 5,500+ websites created by students around the world as part of a competition.

More search engine sites are listed below:

Alta Vista: http://www.altavista.com