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Search Engines Filtering Options
- By Internet Safety Staff
- Published 06/27/2006
- Search Engines
- Unrated
Internet Safety Staff
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View all articles by Internet Safety StaffSearch Engines Filtering Options
Most major search engines get their listings by crawling the web, rather than through human review and categorization, as with the sites listed above. This means its easy for possibly objectionable material to appear in search results.
As a solution, most major search engines offer some type of filtering ability. It's meant to keep out porn content and other material that most might not want children to encounter.
These filters are not perfect. Some material does get past them, and some safe material may get filtered out. To understand more about this, see the Harvard Criticizes Google's Adult Content Filter article that ran in our SearchDay newsletter in April 2003.
AllTheWeb: Use the Basic Settings page to enable the Offensive Content Filter option. The only works for searches in English.
AltaVista: Use the Family Filter Setup page.
AOL Search: Doesn't appear to offer a filter, but enabling Parental Controls might have an impact on web search matches.
Google: See the SafeSearch help page for instructions on setting up filtering on a permanent or as-needed basis.
HotBot: Use the Block Offensive Content section of the Filter Preferences page. Note that you may need to set this again if you change from using the default "HotBot" search engine that's offered.
LookSmart: LookSmart has never accepted adult content for listing within its directory results. However, obscure queries might bring these up in the crawler-based results that are sometimes provided.
Lycos: Use the Adult Filter section of the Advanced Search Filters page.
MSN Search: Use the Safe Search Filter on the Settings page.
Teoma: Teoma doesn't appear to offer a filter.
Yahoo: Set the SafeSearch Filter option via the Search Preferences page.