Children searching information on the Internet: Performance on children's interfaces compared to Google

Children frequently make use of the Internet to search for information. However, research shows that children experience many problems with searching and browsing the web. The last decade numerous search environments have been developed, especially for children. Do these search interfaces support children in effective information-seeking? And do these interfaces add value to today’s popular search engines, such as Google? In this explorative study, we compared children’s search performance on four interfaces designed for children, with their performance on Google. We found that the children did not perform better on these interfaces than on Google. This study also uncovered several problems that children experienced with these search interfaces, which can be of use for designers of future search interfaces for children.