Search Engines Research Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet
Posted in: Child Protection&Online Safety at 27/12/2009 16:33
When Benjamin Feshbach was 11 years old, he was given a brainteaser: Which day would the vice president's birthday fall on the next year?
Benjamin, now 13, said he typed the question directly into the Google search box, to no avail. He then tried Wikipedia, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com, also without success. "Later someone told me it was a multistep question," said Benjamin, a seventh grader from North Potomac, Md.
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When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/technology/internet/26kidsearch.html
