They say charity starts at home, but these days it can also start on your home page. There are a number of philanthropic search engines out there, which I reckon is great – but is there a search engine that can provide a service worth using daily?

Though many aren’t completely non-profit, there are a range of search engines available online, powered by your old favourites such as Google and Yahoo!

Here’s an inside peek:

Helpuu

An affiliate for numerous e-commerce sites such as Amazon and eBay, this Google powered search engine with the perplexing name ‘Helpuu’ claims, "if only 5% of the US population were to use Helpuu, 1,000,000 hungry kids could be fed every single day."

At present Helpuu boast raising enough money to feed 11 824 children every day.

MagicTaxi

Powered by the Silicon Valley based search engine, Yahoo!, MagicTaxi donates 50% of the ad revenue generated to charity. The site alternates the charities, and also features a Firefox search box extension for easy searching.

EveryClick

Powered by Ask and featuring customisable pages for featured charities, British search engine, Everyclick, gives 50% of its revenue to charity every month and has already raised almost $900 000 for to help those in need.

ClickNow

Although ClickNow has raised almost $200 000 in less than 3 years by donating 50% of its gross revenue to participating charities, the site does look like it was designed in MS Office back in ‘97, and is probably the least practical charity search engine in terms of daily use.

SearchKindly

SearchKindly is one of the few charitable search engines that donates 100% of its advertising revenue which has already mounted to $11 000 for charity. Powered by Google, SearchKindly has a “winner-takes-all” voting structure for the monthly charity.

The North American engine has the best interface, and is also one of the only charity search sites to portray a feeling of longevity. My advice would be to use this site if you’re looking to help out during your daily searches – or better yet, add the Firefox search box extension.

Making the Change

For those with “disposable income”, donating to charity can be rewarding experience, but the easiest way to spend money is to spend someone else’s. Your daily search tasks could be raising top beans for a variety of good causes via online adverts and affiliate marketing.