This week’s Vertical: Charity Search Engines

Each week on AltSearchEngines we examine a particular Vertical Search, and this week it’s Charity Search Engines. This is not an exhaustive list, I first selected the 10 best, in my opinion. If you feel that a good one was left out, please leave a comment telling me which one and why you like it.

My Criteria

The five factors that I used in evaluating these search engines are:

Factor #1: Is the site global, or specific to only one country?

Factor #2: How many Charities does it help? Can you choose your own?

Factor #3: How much does it give to those Charities? What % of revenue?

Factor #4: How explicitly do they reveal how to check their figures?

Factor #5: How good are their search results? (All the majors are equal.)

So without further ado, here are my findings:

What Charities benefit? Changes monthly (by audience poll)

How much do they give? “Every single advertising penny.”

Example: May 2007 $486.28 Invisible Children

Who powers the results?

Overall rating? * * *

What Charities benefit? “Pick from 1,000s”

How much do they give? “Most of that Money”

Who powers the results? “Various Sources”

Overall rating? * *

What Charities benefit? You can choose from dozens.

How much do they give? “50% of search revenues”

Who powers the results?

Overall rating? * * * *

What Charities benefit? Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Oxfam.

How much do they give? “100% (of) Profits”

Who powers the results?

Overall rating? *

(Australia)

What Charities benefit? Oxfam; Oaktree foundation; WaterAid; Grameen foundation

How much do they give? “100%. Every cent.”

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * * *

(U.K.)

What Charities benefit? 17 Charities that rotate daily.

How much do they give? “50% of advertising revenue”

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * * *

What Charities benefit? Various Charitable Cancer Foundations

How much do they give? “70% of all (advertising) revenue”

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * *

What Charities benefit? Choose from 39,000!

How much do they give? “50% of Revenues”

Example: Greenpeace YTD $237.18

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * * * *

(U. K.)

What Charities benefit? (A mere) 170,000 U. K. Charities

How much do they give? “50% of gross revenue”

Example: over £250,000 for charity.

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * * * *

What Charities benefit? Rotates Monthly

How much do they give? “100% of profit”

Who powers the results?

Overall Rating? * *

Conclusion

None of the search engines on the list rated a perfect 5 star rating in my book, but several were “very good;” namely GoodTree, GoodSearch, and EveryClick (U.K. only). With just one exception (SearchGive), they all use a Major search engine to power their results, so you should get good search results.

If you fancy one particular charity, then you ought to be able to find it in this group if you check each one. And if you feel like changing the world one penny at a time, I can’t see the harm in switching to a Charity search engines; go for it!

If anyone does switch, would you please drop us a quick comment to let us know which one you chose and why? Thanks!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.