Alphabet's Google now offers a child-friendly version of its search engine, called Kiddle. It features safe-search, simple language and larger pictures.
The landing page of the new site keeps Google's primary colours in the logo design, but also features a robot/alien character underneath the search bar. The results are handpicked by Google editors and powered by Google Safe Search.
All sites that appear in a Kiddle search have, therefore, been filtered to remove explicit or deceptive content.
For example, results on Kiddle for the search query 'Magic Mike' do not include references to the movie about a male stripper, whereas the same search on Google brings up suggestive pictures, videos and articles about the movie.
When using the search engine, if children perform age-inappropriate searches like 'porn', a message will pop-up saying: "Oops, looks like your query contained some bad words. Please try again!"
The top three results on Kiddle will be from safe sites and pages written specifically for children, handpicked and checked by editors. The next four results are from safe, trusted sites that are not written specifically for children, but have content written in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Results after that are from safe, famous sites that are written for adults, providing expert content, but are harder for children to understand.
All thumbnails for search results are larger. "Thumbnails serve as visual clues and are especially beneficial to kids as they don't read as fast as adults," states the Web site. The results appear in large Arial font, which Kiddle says provides better readability.
Kiddle also states it does not collect any personal identifiable information on users, and history logs are deleted every 24 hours.
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