In a test situation, when searching the term ‘ethical SEO agency’ on Google and Ecosia, I found the results to be fairly relevant to my query, but some of the results were not relevant for my location. Potential users of Ecosia may take comfort in the fact that the company hasn’t tried to create its own propitiatory algorithm – and therefore they won’t be sacrificing search results for environmental benefits. Whilst Yahoo! and Bing aren’t the Goliaths of search, they do return pretty sound results and are therefore used by millions of people worldwide. But, Ecosia uses the Yahoo! and Bing algorithms, which many believe are not as developed as the Google algorithms. It must give other options to lead the user to the right result for their queryĮcosia does return relevant results – check.It must be user-friendly, with an easy-to-use interface.It must return results that are helpful to the searcher, and relevant to their query.Ultimately, a search engine needs to fulfil three jobs: Everything has to start somewhere, should we be championing this cause? Whilst Ecosia’s figures may appear paltry next to the giant’s, it is wise to remember that mighty oaks from little acorns grow, and the more users Ecosia gets, the more appealing an advertising prospect it becomes. It is said that there are 3.7 billion users of the internet around the world, so you can see just how much of a monopoly Google has, claiming almost a third of all this search traffic. Google, in contrast, has over 1.17 billion users, and receives over 40,000 queries every second. Ecosia boasts over 5.5 million active users, and receives on average 56 queries per second. Looking at the number of users and the frequency of searches, there’s some serious disparity when comparing Ecosia to Google. Do conservation credentials exceed the search potential?

Don’t mistake Ecosia for a charity or non-profit organisation, though – they are for-profit, however, it’s what is done with the profit from paid search that makes this company a little more interesting.Įcosia advertises that it donates 80% of the search ad profit to plant trees, and the company says it has planted more than 7.2 million (and counting) since launching – though still, unfortunately, going a very small way to offset the estimated 15 billion trees cut down each year. In April 2014, it became one of the only search engines to be awarded a B Corporation status B Corp status is a bit like a bag of coffee having the FairTrade stamp, proving the product and company has strong social and environmental standards. Whilst news and adverts for Ecosia only started popping up in my social media feeds fairly recently, the small search engine actually started up in December 2009. We will cover some of the benefits and compromises found when using alternative search engines, in the future blogs within this series, but for now, back to Ecosia and its environmental ambitions.

There are other lesser-known search engines, each with slightly different USPs and almost certainly providing results with varying levels of success. With this in mind, Ecosia appears the obvious choice of search engine within this sphere of environmentally conscious consumers. Sixty-six percent of people asked said they were prepared to pay more for a product sold by a company who is environmentally aware and committed to sustainability. Nielson carried out an online study and asked 30,000 digital consumers what they thought about the products they buy, and what they’re prepared to pay for a sustainable product. So much so that some companies have departments dedicated to creating policies to champion social and environmental causes, and other departments to make sure their marketing collateral shouts about their green credentials, not least because they know it sells. Perhaps it will make you question if you ought to be searching using something other than Google… Why talk about Ecosia?Įnvironmental awareness and sustainability have rightfully become buzzwords in recent years. With this important day at the front of my mind, I’d like to introduce you to a lesser-known search engine that has environmental issues at its core Saturday 22 April marks Earth Day, and this year’s campaign will focus on educating people about the environment and climate change.

Does ecosia work