Ok. I hate to admit this, but I really thought that Google and Bing were the only search engines available to users. I know, it seems ridiculous, but I guess I never really had reason to look for other options. So, this week I investigated some other options. The audience in mind was secondary students and I searched for Muslim Inventors AND Golden age of Islam. Here are some thoughts:
| Search Engine | Discussion |
| The familiarity of the interface is very appealing and there are some relevant pages for a secondary audience in the first 10 results. The related search section with Muslim Inventors would be really helpful for students. The first results were a course offering, CNN and Wiki which is not great! The primary issue with this search engine for students, is the feature which I am sure many people enjoy – the text snippet at the start and related questions. I have found with my students that they click on these and then move further away from their initial search, rather than using them to refine their results. By having the snippet at the top, students see this as the “answer” to their question, rather than delving a little deeper. | |
| Bing | Clear interface and some good results. I am not sure however if the results would be as easy to unpack for students as the Google or Duck Duck Go results. Many of the results are very specific and I think that if a student was researching an assignment, they would want a broader range of inventions and inventors. Interesting there were no image results displayed on this search. |
| Duck Duck Go | The interface is clean and easy to take in. The first site (after the advertisement) is a great site for Islamic Inventors. The results look good, however, I am not sure about the inclusion of the “Good news network” in the first 10 results. The high level of privacy in this search engine is a huge advantage for users. A downside of this site is that first result was advertising, but there was no other advertising on the result page. |
| KidzSearch | This search engine delivers reliable results to this search such as the met museum and national geographic. However, there is a large amount of advertising and the interface looks outdated and it is not as streamlined as some of the other search engines. |
| Kiddle | The positive aspects of this site are no advertising and there are some good results. However, there were too many mentions of the word “kids” for a secondary audience. Also, many results were not relevant – they had information on the golden age of Islam but could not combine that with inventors. This interface feels more suited to primary school. The lack of complexity in results would be an issue for a secondary user. |
| Sweetsearch | It is great that there is no advertising on this site, and while there are some similar sites listed as the other search engines, I don’t think that all the search results are as relevant as the other search engines. The interface would also not be as appealing for students. |
On reflection, I think that Duck Duck Go is the overall leader for Search Engine. The added privacy and limited advertising are the big positives for me, so I am going to give it a try with my students.