For Districts

Make ClassroomSearch.com the search engine your students reach every time, on every school device. It is free, needs no accounts, rosters, or sign-up, and collects no student information.

1. Allow classroomsearch.com in your web filter

Everything ClassroomSearch.com shows, including picture previews and site icons, comes from classroomsearch.com itself. There are no outside fonts, CDNs, analytics, or trackers to allow, so a single domain is all your filter needs.

• Allow JavaScript and first-party cookies. The first search on each browser runs a quick, invisible check that sets one functional cookie, cs_d. It keeps automated scripts from using up the search service. It holds no name, account, or search history.
• HTTPS inspection is fine. If your filter decrypts traffic with your district’s own certificate, ClassroomSearch.com works normally.
• Make an exception to category blocks. If your filter blocks the “Search engines” category, add classroomsearch.com as an allowed site.

2. Send us your district’s public IP ranges

To keep the service free, ClassroomSearch.com limits how many searches can come from one internet address at a time. A whole school sharing one address can look like one very busy user, especially when a class all searches at once. If you send us the public egress IP addresses or ranges (the addresses your network uses on the internet, in CIDR notation such as 203.0.113.0/24), we can give them much higher limits.

Email them to contact@classroomsearch.com from a district address, with your district’s name. We use them only for these limits.

3. Make ClassroomSearch.com the default search engine

When ClassroomSearch.com is the default, anything a student types in the address bar is searched with ClassroomSearch.com. These are the values every browser needs:

Chromebooks (Google Admin console)

1. Sign in to the Google Admin console with an administrator account.
2. Go to Devices > Chrome > Settings > Users & browsers.
3. Choose the organizational unit for your students (and teachers, if you like) on the left.
4. Find the Search provider settings. Typing “search provider” in the settings search box is the quickest way.
5. Set Default search provider to enabled, and fill in the name, keyword, and search URL from the table above.
6. Click Save. Chromebooks pick up the change the next time they sync policy, usually within a few hours. Restarting a Chromebook, or visiting chrome://policy and choosing Reload policies, applies it right away.

Because the setting is managed, students can’t change it, and browser extensions can’t take it over. If you use managed guest sessions or kiosk devices, set the same values under Devices > Chrome > Settings > Managed guest session as well.

While you are in Users & browsers, you can also set Homepage and Pages to load on startup to https://classroomsearch.com/, and add ClassroomSearch.com to Managed bookmarks so it’s one click away.

Chrome and Edge on Windows and Mac

Chrome and Microsoft Edge use the same policy names. Set them with Group Policy (Administrative Templates > Google Chrome, or Microsoft Edge, > Default search provider), Intune’s settings catalog, or a configuration profile from your Mac MDM:

DefaultSearchProviderEnabled    = true
DefaultSearchProviderName       = ClassroomSearch.com
DefaultSearchProviderKeyword    = classroomsearch.com
DefaultSearchProviderSearchURL  = https://classroomsearch.com/?q={searchTerms}
DefaultSearchProviderIconURL    = https://classroomsearch.com/assets/img/favicon.svg

Edge on Windows applies these settings only on devices that are joined to a domain or enrolled in device management. That’s already true of most district devices.

Firefox

Use Firefox’s SearchEngines enterprise policy: Add an engine with the name and search URL above, then make it the Default. Mozilla’s policy documentation lists which Firefox versions support each option.

iPads and Safari

Safari only lets you choose from its own short list of search engines, so ClassroomSearch.com can’t be Safari’s default. Instead:

• Use your MDM (Jamf, Mosyle, Intune, and others) to put a Web Clip for https://classroomsearch.com/ on the home screen, and add it as a Safari bookmark.
• Redirect other search engines at your firewall or web filter (next section), so a search typed in Safari’s address bar still lands on ClassroomSearch.com.

4. Redirect other search engines at your firewall

The default search setting covers managed browsers. A redirect covers everything else on your network: students who go straight to another search engine, unmanaged browsers, and devices you can’t set policy on. Most school web filters and next-generation firewalls can do this. Look for a URL redirect, URL rewrite, or custom block page rule.

What to redirect

Redirect the search pages, not whole domains. Blocking all of google.com or bing.com would break sign-in, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and maps.

Where to send it

• Simplest: send every matching request to the home page, https://classroomsearch.com/.
• Best: if your filter can copy part of the address into the redirect, carry the search words over so the student lands right on their results: https://classroomsearch.com/?q=search words. For picture searches, add &t=images. The words are already web-encoded in the original address, so copy them as they are.

A regular-expression rule for Google looks something like this (the exact syntax depends on your filter):

Match:     ^https?://(www\.)?google\.[a-z.]+/search\?(.*&)?q=([^&]*)
Redirect:  https://classroomsearch.com/?q=$3

Things to know

• You need HTTPS inspection, or a filter that runs on the device. Search engines use HTTPS, so a network filter can only see the full address (the /search part) if it decrypts traffic with a certificate your devices trust. Filters that run as a browser extension or device agent can see full addresses without it.
• Don’t use DNS to point a search engine at our address. Browsers check each site’s security certificate, so students would get a security warning instead of ClassroomSearch.com.
• Search inside other apps, such as the search box on a news site or in Google Docs, is not affected. Only the search engines’ own result pages are redirected.

5. Lock SafeSearch on as a backstop

For any search engine you allow or can’t redirect, you can force its strictest filter at the DNS level. These are settings each search engine provides for schools:

• Google: point www.google.com (and the country sites you use) at forcesafesearch.google.com.
• Bing: point www.bing.com at strict.bing.com.
• DuckDuckGo: point duckduckgo.com at safe.duckduckgo.com.
• YouTube: point www.youtube.com and m.youtube.com at restrict.youtube.com (or restrictmoderate.youtube.com).

On Chromebooks, the Admin console also has SafeSearch and Restricted Mode settings under Users & browsers that do the same for Google and YouTube.

6. Test it

1. Sign in to a Chromebook with a test student account in the right organizational unit.
2. Type a word such as volcanoes in the address bar and press Enter. The results should be on classroomsearch.com.
3. Visit another search engine directly and search there. You should land on ClassroomSearch.com.
4. Open chrome://policy to confirm the DefaultSearchProvider settings arrived.

7. Share it with teachers and families

• Link straight to a search. Any search can be shared as a link, so a teacher can post https://classroomsearch.com/?q=water+cycle in Google Classroom, Canvas, or Schoology and every student starts in the same place. Add &t=images to open picture results.
• Teach with the built-in tools. Trusted sources such as schools, government agencies, and museums are labeled and moved up, and every result has a Cite button with MLA, APA and Chicago citations students can copy into their work.
• At home. Families can add ClassroomSearch.com in Chrome or Edge under Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines, using the search URL above, and make it the default.
• Put it on your website. A link on your district, school, or library page helps students find it from any device.

Privacy and student data

ClassroomSearch.com has no accounts and never asks for a student’s name, email address, or any other personal information. Searches are never linked to a person, device, or IP address, and search engines and safety services only ever receive the search words, from our server, not from the student’s device. Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service explain it all in plain English, and answer most of the questions on district data privacy reviews.