What is Ecosia?
Ecosia is a search engine that uses its profits to plant trees worldwide. Users who search contribute to its tree-planting efforts indirectly, as each search generates a small amount of revenue from ads.
Ecosia has privacy-friendly policies like encrypting searches, limited data collection, customizable personalization, and non-invasive ad strategies. It is also highly transparent about its profits and climate initiatives, publishing monthly financial reports on how the company uses profits.
They are rolling out Google-powered search as an option, but in the meantime, its search technology is primarily powered by Bing. Overall, Ecosia delivers quality search results. While there are instances where it’s better to turn to Google, it works great for everyday searches.
How Ecosia Works
Ecosia operates like other search engines, but its business model is focused on environmental sustainability. Here are the basics:
- Search Queries: Users perform searches. Ecosia uses Bing technology and additional algorithms to deliver search results.
- Ad Revenue: Like most search engines, Ecosia earns money from advertisements. Some search results are sponsored ads, and Ecosia earns money through how users interact with them.
- Tree Planting: The company commits to using a significant portion of its income to fund tree-planting projects worldwide. These projects aim to combat climate change and support ecosystems and communities.
- Financial Transparency: Ecosia publishes monthly reports detailing how much money was earned and how they use it.
- User Privacy: Ecosia takes a user-centered approach to privacy. They collect very little user data and use several techniques to limit tracking and support anonymity. If you’re interested in more, you can read their privacy page, which is detailed and straightforward.
Ecosia’s model offers users a simple yet impactful way to contribute to environmental sustainability through everyday activities like searching the web.
Climate Efforts
Ecosia is a highly transparent company and has several resources for you to learn the fine details of how it operates. One of the best ways to learn more is by reviewing their financial reports. These offer interactive insights on income and spending.
Notable Accomplishments
- Hundreds of millions of trees planted: As of January 2024, Ecosia has planted over 200 million trees. They avoid monocultures and grow native species. They offer additional information on their tree projects for each country.
- Climate investments: Ecosia has efforts beyond tree planting, including renewable energy projects like solar panel installations. Its operations remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than they generate, making the company carbon-negative.
- Certifications and partnerships: Ecosia is a certified B Corporation, which means it has met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. It also partners with various organizations for its tree-planting initiatives, ensuring the projects are beneficial and sustainable.
- Tree Gifting: If you ever want to spend green on green, you can gift trees through their online store. Packages range from $15 sprouts to $900 forests.
User Base
Ecosia has 20 million monthly active users, primarily located in Europe, esp. Germany and France. People who use Ecosia are generally between the ages of 20 to 30, city-based and all share an interest in environmental topics.
Source: Advertising on Ecosia
Ecosia and SEO
You don’t need to worry about doing SEO work on your site for Ecosia, and there is no such thing as “Ecosia SEO”.
In fact, Ecosia’s SEO advice is to follow Google’s SEO advice.
So, if you want your site to perform well in Ecosia’s organic results, you should use the same strategies you’d use for Google Search.
This primarily involves ensuring you have a quality site that’s easy to use and features strong, keyword-rich content.
Bottom Line
Ecosia is a search engine that uses its profits to fight climate change. They do this through planting trees, green investments, and renewable energy efforts.
The search engine collects little user data and exhibits privacy-focused practices. It is a solid search engine and a nice option for supporting climate-friendly projects.
