Ecosia: The search engine that plants trees
- Ecosia has been carbon neutral since 2020.
- It has a negative carbon footprint.
- It produces twice the renewable energy it needs to run.
This post came about when our CEO suggested a game that we really liked. The idea was to install the Ecosia search engine – that he had been using for a long time – and if we managed to plant a certain number of trees, there would be a prize for all participants. Ooh… what could it be?!
But what is Ecosia?
Ecosia is an internet search engine similar to Google, Bing or Yandex, but the big difference is that 100% of the profits go back to the planet. About 80% goes to planting trees, but they also invest in renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, climate action and protecting existing trees around the world. Some figures about Ecosia to give you an idea:
151,832,954 trees planted
by Ecosia users
One of the most important things about Ecosia is privacy. Here are some of the key points:
- It does not store your search data permanently
- It does not sell your data to advertisers.
- Your searches are secure.
- It does not use external tracking tools.
- You can opt out of tracking.
If you want to read more about their privacy policy:
https://info.ecosia.org/privacy
When was Ecosia founded?
Ecosia’s beginnings date back to 2009, when the 15th UN Climate Change Conference was held in Copenhagen. Founder Koll created “Forestle” with the intention of working with Google. But Google abandoned the collaboration. In 2013, the project’s URLs were redirected to Ecosia, officially launching the greenest, most transparent and, in our opinion, most responsible search engine.
How does Ecosia work?
A quick explanation.
The searches you and other users perform on the search engine plant trees in some of the most inhospitable places on earth. For example, in Burkina Faso, Indonesia or Brazil. Here’s a link to all their projects and the impact they’re having.
< See Ecosia’s trees here 😉 >
The search engine uses the profits it makes from all searches to plant trees. The revenue comes from advertising. The revenue goes to planting trees. Green and transparent. But if you’re still not sure, you can check their financial reports, which they publish every month. Here’s the link: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/
To use Ecosia, you have several options:
- The first is to go directly to ecosia.org and enter your search. This is the same as using Google or Bing.
- Another option is to install the free extension for Chrome or Edge.
To put the data in context, according to Statcounter in February 2021, the search engine market in Spain was divided into the following shares: Google – 96.05%, Bing – 2.75%, Yahoo! – 0.65%, DuckDuckGo – 0.3%, Ecosia – 0.18%, Yandex (Russia) – 0.03%.
You can check it out here: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/spain
In September 2020, Ecosia was the sixth search engine on the European market with 0.31% of searches.
If you’re curious and passionate about analytics like me, here’s a link https://www.statista.com/statistics/1150709/ecosia-search-engine-market-share-by-region/ where you can see the evolution, as they provide data from July 2019 onwards.
A different value proposition for users and businesses
It really is one of the best alternatives as a search engine. And we believe that if you suggest using it as a search engine (as we do at IM+C), you will be helping to plant trees, increasing awareness of the impact of our digital actions and embarking on a new and responsible path.
At Normmal we take sustainability very seriously, which is why we not only use the browser, but also recommend it to our clients in their search engine campaigns.
Not only are we helping them to be successful in their business, but we’re also helping to make the world a better place.
Now that I’ve told you about the 100% green search engine that plants trees, I also want to tell you that we’ve already planted 151 saplings. What about you?
Eugenio Ghirardi
SEO & PPC Manager
