| Navigational Searchers: Reduce Your CO2 Emissions by 0.2g |
| Written by Jeremy Kuo | ||||||
| Tuesday, 21 April 2009 18:29 | ||||||
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Recently, a fellow happy hour goer pointed that his wife googles everything, even when she knows the domain, which led me to think, is there an alternative to outsourcing this subjective convenience / laziness to a search engine and thus sparing extra datacenter and telecommunications energy (CPU power, server cooling, data transfer to the user, etc.)? Why is carbon footprint a topic in this SEM blog?April 22, 2009 is Earth Day! According to a Gartner, Inc. study on Information and Communications Technology CO2 emissions, globally, the "ICT industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation". Per Google, "in terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2" (a relatively small amount). What is a navigational query?A navigational query (as opposed to informational and transactional) is a search performed with the intent to visit a specific website. Here's an example of a navigational query supplied by Google's Matt Cutts: "a navigational query is typing in [HP] and expecting to see www.hp.com high in the search results". How can I reduce my carbon footprint?Aside from the obvious browser bookmarks, or perhaps Google Notebook if you're always on the go and/or with new browser sessions, use your browser's shortcut keys! Browser Shortcut KeysConfirmed on Firefox 3, Chrome 1, Opera 9, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3:
To select the address bar in FF, Chrm, Opr & Sfr: To populate the WWW host name prefix and the gTLD, type the domain name, then:
Closing Notes0.2g of CO2 is low: according to Google, a typical user's total volume of search in a year equates to the emissions of one laundry load. Nonetheless, if you believe that worthy butterfly effects flap out of grassroots, use your keyboard shortcuts! Who knows how many web users bypass their address bar in favor of googling their favorite domains...
Interested in knowing what a Google Datacenter looks like? Here it is unveiled for the first time! 4/22 9:30AM addendum - Screenshot of Google Search's portal page for the day: 
Happy Earth Day! Jeremy is a certified Google AdWords Professional, a pre-Panama Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador and an accredited Microsoft adExcellence Member, and prior to BIGSHOT, has campaigned for over 150 SMB clients nationwide in both the organic and the sponsored realms of search engine marketing. Learn more about Jeremy Kuo.
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