Zoo.com

Last updated
Zoo.com
Type of site
Search Engine
Available in English
OwnerSystem1
URL http://www.zoo.com/
LaunchedNovember 14, 2006;15 years ago (2006-11-14)
Current statusActive

Zoo.com is a metasearch engine, which as of 2006, provided results from search engines and other sources, including Google, Yahoo! and Wikipedia. [1] Also as of 2006, Zoo.com provided news content from ABC News, Fox News and Yahoo! News. [1]

History

InfoSpace launched Zoo.com on November 14, 2006, as a kid-friendly metasearch engine after InfoSpace, through conducting their own survey, claimed that kids who are more reliant on the internet are more likely to encounter material inappropriate for them. [2]

Zoo.com competed with other kid-friendly search engines at the time such as Yahoo!'s Yahooligans, AOL's Study Buddy, Ask's Ask for Kids and KidsClick!. [1] The metasearch engine used several methods to filter out adult content such as adult sites and adult phrases and did not show results for certain search queries, such as "sex". [1]

In 2014, MetaCrawler, another metasearch engine owned by InfoSpace, was merged into Zoo.com, [3] but was later relaunched as its own search engine in 2017. [4]

In July 2016, Blucora announced the sale of its InfoSpace business to OpenMail for $45 million, putting Zoo.com under the ownership of OpenMail. [5] OpenMail was later renamed System1. [6]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Sterling, Greg (2006-11-14). "InfoSpace Launches Kid-Friendly Search Engine Zoo.com". Search Engine Watch. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  2. "New Kid-Friendly Search Engine Zoo.com Offers Wealth of Information Without the Worry". Business Wire . 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  3. "MetaCrawler". 2014-01-01. Archived from the original on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  4. "MetaCrawler". 2017-04-03. Archived from the original on 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  5. "Blucora to sell InfoSpace business for $45 million". Seattle Times. July 5, 2016.
  6. "System1 raises $270 million for 'consumer intent' advertising". L.A. Biz. Retrieved 2017-12-01.