Ecosia: The Search Engine That Plants Trees

This is an update of a former post.

I’m guessing you use the internet a lot. I mean, there are few who don’t. The hubs of the internet that we use all the time but rarely think about are called search engines. You probably already know that, but hey- you never know.

As you might also know, the climate is rapidly changing, and we need to do something about it now. And you might be thinking, ‘What can I do to help?’ Well, do I have a solution for you. If you can’t be bothered to do anything but want to help, try using/installing Ecosia.

Ecosia is a search engine like Google. It uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine to get its results but uses the ad revenue it gets from ads that appear in the search results to plant trees. It’s pretty cool.

But is it any good?

Well, it depends. If you like Google’s card-style design showing you snippets of useful information at the top of the results, you’re pretty much out of luck. Bing does have its own version, however, this is in no way as accurate or useful. It’s still a nice thing to have, though.

The quality of results is fine. I haven’t noticed any major issues so far. The only problem I have with it is that on mobile, you have to use their browser or else you cannot set it as the default search engine. This is a huge pain as it’s definitely not as advanced or modern as other browsers, but until this functionality is implemented into other browsers I guess we’ll just have to wait.

I really enjoy the fact that you can see the number of trees you have “planted” by searching, however, I cannot verify the accuracy of this figure.

Overall, Ecosia is an OK search engine. Although the results are not as advanced as Google’s, they will improve as Bing does, and there’s the added bonus of planting trees, which is great. Check it out if you like.