Children often struggle to retrieve age-appropriate information when seeking information online. One big reason for this is that their search queries are short, misspelled, or vague. As a solution to this problem, previous research investigated query reformulation, where the input query is manipulated in a way that the retrieved web results are more child-appropriate. This was measured by various metrics and scores, such as readability and content safety of the retrieved web search results. The problem with present query reformulation strategies, however, is that each tackles this problem from one perspective, missing out on the potential benefits of other perspectives. For instance, expanding the query with the “for kids” cue has shown to be a good way to target a specific audience and helps retrieve more child-appropriate content; however, on top of this considering substitutes for uncommon words with simpler synonyms might further enhance the child-appropriateness of the retrieved results as it tackles the reformulation from a different perspective than “for kids” audience cue expansion.

Motivated by this, we propose a multi-step query reformulation strategy that combines multiple reformulation strategies and applies them to the given input child query in a multi-step manner using a Large Language Model (LLM). We use LLM to apply the reformulation strategies to the input query in a chain-of-calls (where each call is prompted to apply a different reformulation strategy). This proposed method captures the perspective of multiple reformulation strategies, rather than a single one, unlike existing reformulation strategies. The results of our experiments, which include a baseline comparison (of the retrieved search results from the reformulated query against the original query) and an ablation study, provide insight into the performance of our strategy.

With this work, we aim to demonstrate the potential of combining multiple reformulation strategies and their impact on improving the readability and content safety of retrieved web search results when applied to children’s search queries. Our findings reveal a significant improvement in the readability of retrieved results after using the proposed reformulation method. Ultimately, this work contributes to the development of next-generation, child-centric search systems that deliver clearer, safer results for children.