Google, the most popular search engine on the web, performs more than 1,000 searches every second of every day, for every search performed, the Web site makes money.
Each time a person uses a specific search engine, it generates about two cents from advertising. Multiplied by the millions of searches performed every day, this revenue adds up to almost six billion dollars made by search engines last year.
In the minds of the creators of GoodSearch.com this presented a perfect opportunity to earn money for charities around the world.
Goodsearch, a search engine powered by Yahoo.com, donates half of its revenues to the charitable organization of the user’s choosing.
Ken Ramberg, who heads MonsterTRAK, the college recruiting division of Monster.com, and is a member of the boards of numerous charities, is a co-founder of GoodSearch.com.
According to Ramberg, the three main goals of the site are “to generate significant contributions to nonprofits, increase awareness, and gain new supporters for thousands of good causes.”
“Our thought was, what if even a fraction of the money [generated by search engines] could be directed toward good causes?” Ramberg said. “People could make a significant difference simply by doing something that they do daily √¢?” searching the Internet.”
GoodSearch allows a user to choose which organization to donate to from a long list of charities. A person using the search engine can name any charity they choose in the box located underneath the search topic they type in. One can pick a specific charity or just find one by typing in a keyword. For example, typing in the word “cancer” will bring up a list of cancer research charities.
“An organization with 1,000 supporters who use GoodSearch to search the Internet just four times a day, would raise more than $14,000 per year,” Ramberg said.
One of the most popular charities in the U.S., the American Cancer Society, has raised over $320 since January of 2006.
Recently, GoodSearch has come into use in many colleges throughout the country. Some schools have held fundraisers where students have to search on the site a certain number of times per day in order to raise money for a specific charity. Because college students are often the setters of new technological trends, its popularity may be attributed to widespread student use.
