Ecosia Reviews 286

While the idea supporting the financing of reforestation is good and does mobilise the support of many, this organisation has to do better in ensuring it has an actual impact. They are otherwise wasting everyone's time and monies.
As someone who works in the sector and has had direct experience with Ecosia and some of their partners, I am troubled by their low expectations. Tree planting without a serious and carefully thought out programme does not work. Hoping for the best is not good enough. Reporting outputs (results of activities) is not the same as impact. That is why I would support organisations with serious impact protocols and processes.

Great idea and such a simple, easy way of making a difference in the world

Absolutely great idea! The search results are sometimes a little off but never irrelevant. I am in love with the idea that I only have to install the browser and then go about my day, looking up random stuff and studying like I always do. No extra effort needed to plant these trees, only the patience from some sometimes weird search results.

I Will recomend this to anyone who wants to help support a good cause!

I really like the idea of Ecosia! I like helping the environment and this is a great way of doing this. I have stopped using it though because I don't like the layout of the mobile app and the search results aren't the best. I would recommend it for helping the environment, but not for search results.

Really excellent search engine that leaves Google in the dust and if you compare search results you begin to clearly see how Ecosia hasn't monetised its results. Google wants you to pay them to adjust your listing's position in their page results.

I'm using Ecosia from now on

Been using the search engine a couple of days now on my desktop without any problems. Very happy with my switch away from Google. Did get redirected back to Google for maps as Ecosia doesn't have that function but that didn't bother me. More to the point, we have just 12 years to avoid dangerous climate change and keep to 1.5 degrees global warming (according to UN scientists recent report). The more trees we plant to absorb carbon emissions, the better. Its a great concept.

Like, I would switch full on to ecosia if you just added the mini games that like google does on their logo? Like, totally, 100% would. Like, you have no idea. If you do that, my rating will go up to 5 stars and I'll like, plant as many trees as you want, like, totally.

Thanks xoxo uwu

The idea is brilliant and of course it takes nothing to use Ecosia instead of a different web browser but I have found it is just not very good as a search engine.

The web can be slow at my work at the best of times but since using ecosia I have searches 'time out' and web pages not available (which are instantly available if I switch to Google - my previous default). It was really easy to go to my web setting and 'disable' ecosia though.

I have also found the relevance of my searches is quite off - not just in terms of distance but also common sense. For example, I wanted the homepage of an organisation but ecosia has only showed me a link to a random page on their website (not home/main page) so I have to click that and then click the company's 'homepage' button...just a backwards way of doing things.

I would love to use ecosia long term but until these bugs get sorted I don't see people sticking around for long.

Very good idea! Making our World better place by planting forests... and by only using this search engine! Very good :)

Pretty poor at searching. I tried looking for something 'near me'. I live in Scotland and it gave me results in Derbyshire!

It is easy to use and charitable to help earth by growing trees. People are complaining about not being able to get it off but its fairly easy you go into settings of the bar that looks like three dots . You go in to settings and look at your search engines you can disable Ecosia go on manage search engines should you need to but afterwards it will be on other search engines also on manage search engines setting and you can add it any time you like once you disable it . it will then be on other search engines which are NOT default and retry to put on default it no longer forces you to keep as default and you can swap between Ecosia and Google chrome these instructions are for Google chrome although it sounds complex it really is simple

it has a good cause, yet it was hard for me to do my school work, it was very annoying, an completely changed my search engine. I worked out how to delete it, as I can see many angry comments about not being able to delete it.

its great that they want to plant trees with searches its a great idea but I got it and can't get it off. apparently theres no easy way to stop using ecosia and go back to google because theres no off button. i think ill end up having to download some sort of virus scanner to try delete it or reset my safari which would be annoying and inconvenient. i didnt like it because it was slow and the ads at the top look like your searches so i click on them without realising. but now i cant use anything else because it automatically overides everything and redirects it to the ecosia search engine. i feel betrayed by the nice guy in the video that convince me to help the world by using ecosia. its not great and i definitely do not recommend :(

Just got it ads are always annoying but if they're really planting trees I don't care about ads as long as something I do everyday makes world a better place :)

HATE IT!!!
Has monetized ads that come up at the top of the page, just plain had an unappealing look and unsatisfactory searches. Once it started getting in the way of my work, I wanted to delete it, however, it DOESN'T ALLOW YOU TO in the settings. Found that to be an incredibly low move, trying to force someone to keep Ecosia simply by hiding how to get rid of it. Finally found out how to switch it back to google (since even if you make google your home page, if you search in the URL bar, IT WILL TAKE YOU TO ECOSIA!!!) So glad to be rid of it! For those wondering, to get rid of Ecosia on a Mac:
Safari-> preferences-> extensions-> and click UNINSTALL next to ecosia. Also make sure it's not your default browser under 'general' in Safari Preferences.

If you want to save the environment, honestly it's less hassle to just plant the trees yourself.

I love it! Plant trees while you search the web
Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees with its ad revenue. Get the free browser extension and use Ecosia every time you search.

this is one of these examples, where 1 person CAN make a difference.
I absolutely love this project.

the big competition is, obviously, Google. and yes, i also use google, mostly on my phone, because its there on default… but I wish i could also have like a plugin or something for the phone.

keep going, guys, you're awesome!!