Apart from Google alternatives, it’s nice to see search engines designed specially for children and teenagers. Credibility, safety, and an orientation to learning are the common themes of these relatively new sites. Here are some.

Fact Monster: A search engine and a mini-portal on one page, for kids as well as older students. Search results are usually short pages, kid- and teen-friendly. The top results are from dictionaries and encyclopedias, pronunciation guides, map sites, and the like.

GoGooligans: “The Green Search Engine for Kids and Teens.” Apart from really safe search, GoGooligans features search suggestions specifically for kids and students. You can choose to search from all of the Internet, or from reference sites, educational sites, and so on. Definitely our recommended pick from this list!

Twurdy: This site, before showing result pages, reads each page using text analysis software. It then colour-codes the results on a readability scale, which indicates how easy or difficult the page is. This classification of “easy-to-read pages” and “long or complex pages” is useful in many ways; one, of course, is that younger people can choose to read “easy” pages.

Qwiki: Not a traditional search engine, but a collection of little information packages called qwikis. Each qwiki has text, pictures, and graphics, grouped somewhat like a presentation—which translates to a quick, visual way of looking at things. This makes qwikis especially useful for looking up personalities, places, events, and the like.

SweetSearch: A search engine exclusively for students and kids, SweetSearch displays results only from sites approved by experts. This means every site in the results is credible and safe.