AltaVista Family Filter Revisited

Last issue we talked about the AltaVista search engine's Family Filter mode. We heard from many of you who tried the filter and had vastly different results than I did. Seems like AltaVista made some changes to their filter just after our last issue went out. So I decided to play around a bit with the filter. The FAQ states that the categories they filter on are:

Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco
Gambling
Hate Speech
Sexually Explicit
Violence

The search box itself says to "Ask AltaVista(tm) a Question in English" (using the AskJeeves technology). With the Family Filter turned on I decided to ask a question that would fit one of the above categories. I asked "How do I make LSD?" (minus the quotes) and received 10,169,898 hits. When I did the search the very first item had explicit instructions (I can't vouch for the accuracy of the instructions).

To be fair to AltaVista the breakdown shows the phrase "make LSD" has "about 100" matches with the rest going to "How." "Do" and "I" are ignored. At Infoseek with the GOguardian(tm) turned on I get 90 hits in return for "make LSD". So this sort of technology isn't perfect. I'm going to be writing to both AltaVista and Infoseek about the matter. My main concern is whether this is an issue they take seriously or are they trying to gain the trust of Web surfers who are unaware of the underlying defects?

I'm holding off writing my letters until after this issue goes out. AltaVista has never returned any email I've sent on these problems. I investigate these things because I have a family and I have clients who ask me about such things. If any of you have pointers to good family friendly search engines I'd like to hear about them.