Review of sweetsearch.com...B

As a future teacher, I was very excited when I read there is a search engine that evaluates internet sources for academic accuracy before making it available to students. As an adult working on a master’s program, and constantly researching information for assignments and projects, it’s frustrating when your search question is not accurately answered and you have to wade through dozens, potentially hundreds of sources you don’t know whether you can trust or not. I am currently 41 years old, am well educated, and have had a plethora of life experience which helps me filter opinion from fact, and news from entertainment...and yet I still struggle! I can only imagine how younger, less experienced students feel, and as a decent human being am concerned about what these youth are consuming. Enter sweetsearch.com.

According to their website, the SweetSearch search engine “searches only the 35,000 Web sites that our staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved” and consistently re-evaluates and fine tunes their results, “by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites” (SweetSearch, n.d).

A search engine for students that only provides relevant information? Wow, this is a game changer and a potential must have for not only EFL/ESL students, but every content area teacher and Googler alike!

I decided to conduct a couple of searches on important historical subjects in the United States, and another couple grammar related searches, to judge for myself, the merit and usefulness of sweetsearch.com.

The home page is similar to any leading search engine page; simple to understand and straight to the point.

As you can see, in addition to a general search for information, you can specify whether you want to search for news articles in particular, or history related sources.

The first search I decided to do was, who invented the lightbulb?

Although you have to scroll down past several ads like you would with other search engines, without even opening any of the sources I could tell the info was legit. The teaser information from the first couple of results included sentences such as “Long before Thomas Edison patented...” and “Though Thomas Edison is usually credited with the invention of the light bulb, the famous American inventor wasn't the only one who ...”

Right off the bat this tells me the information is not oversimplified like some traditional textbooks, and provides deeper dives into the origins of an invention that Thomas Edison tends to get all the credit for, but does not completely deserve. After actually reading through the first couple of articles my initial impressions seemed to be correct; there was consensus between articles that Edison was not the inventor of the light bulb, but the inventor of the first commercially practical and affordable one. The difference is huge, because if you believe the myth, you essentially erase the contributions of scientists around the world who directly and indirectly contributed to Edison’s success.

Now, to be honest, as I continued to open articles down the page, there were some that glossed over the contributions of others, and some that simply ignored them, perpetuating the myth about Thomas Edison. Although these articles seemed to have information in accordance with the other sources, the long story short is students will still have to do their due diligence to get the full picture. But all in all, a good start.

The next search I conducted was, when did slavery start in America? This time I decided to compare the results of a general search with the results of a “history” search; they were slightly different, but pretty much the same. I began to dive into the first few articles, and again, was happy to read the information was deeper, and more accurate, then some traditional textbooks. The sources I found included NPR, PBS, The National Archives, Library of Congress, history.com, Time, Smithsonian, and a number of University, and media sites. Most of the articles described the early introduction of slaves and indentured servants to the Americas, not only in North, but in South and Central America as well, and included the role the French, Spanish, Portugese and Dutch explorers played in slavery’s proliferation, in addition to the English.

Like the lightbulb search, not every article provides the same information. Other articles also provide seemingly accurate info, but attribute the start of slavery in America to 1619, almost 100 years later. The significance, again, of oversimplifying, or glossing over, such significant aspects of history, is damaging to our understanding of history as we are fundamentally misinformed, and mislead (intentionally or unintentionally is inconsequential). Still pretty good overall, but again, students will have to do their due diligence to get the full, accurate picture.

Out of curiosity, I decided to conduct the same two searches on the leading search engine to see what different results came up. The first page of each search actually included a number of the same resources, but from the 2nd page on, the results began to vary greatly. Although I am not a historian and cannot independently verify all of the information presented from sweetsearch.com, it is clear the search engine, at a minimum, consolidates relevant information specific to your search, and filters out the spam. Overall, I was very pleased with what I found so far.

It would appear, with minimal investigation that sweetsearch.com is superior to leading search engines, and at a minimum, only presents relevant information. However, I kept digging and expanded my search parameters just to see how great this site really is. I decided to query something perhaps an EFL or ESL student would: what is the grammatical difference between if I was and if I were? In this case, the results weren’t as good.

As you can see, only 3 out of the first 10 results actually pertained to the question. This is unfortunate for EFL/ESL teachers, because although we will want our students to have accurate information, language, not history research is the main focus. When I did the same search through the leading search engine, this is what I got: 7 out of the first 7 results directly related to my search. In this case, SweetSearch was not the better choice.

I decided to do one more language related search, how to write a narrative essay?

Again, I was a little disappointed. Only 2 out of the first 9 results directly addressed my question.

In the end, it seems as though the quality of results is somewhat dependent on exactly what you’re looking for. Sweetsearch does use a whitelist of vetted websites rather than using filters, and this certainly helps when it comes to news, historical or scientific information, but as you can see, the quality of results are somewhat inconsistent when you expand the parameters of your search.

Nothing in the SweetSearch website suggests it is solely to be used for history projects or accurate news reporting, so to say it is superior, or should not be used in conjunction with other resources would be misleading. The power of SweetSearch is not quite equal to other traditional search engines, but the safety from spam and blatantly misleading sources it provides to students is certainly excellent.

At the end of the day, the grade I give SweetSearch depends on how it is used.

For accurate news and historical information, I give it an B+.

For student safety, I give it an A+.

For overall relevant information, I give it a B-.

For EFL/ESL purposes, I give it a D+.

Overall, I give it a B.