Google Workspace configuration
Switch your company’s search engine to Ecosia and help reforest the planet!
This guide explains how IT can configure Ecosia through Google Workspace at a company, school or university.
If your organization is considering using Ecosia, let us know so we can support you through the process. We’re on hand to help!
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Step 1 - Enrolling managed browsers
To complete this step please consult the support documentation from Google: Enroll cloud-managed Chrome browsers and use your preferred deployment method for token enrolment.
Tip: Ensure you enroll browsers to the correct Organisational Unit.
Step 2 - Configuring Ecosia using Policy Settings
Login to the Google Workspace Admin Console.
Go to Devices → Managed Browser → Settings → User & browser
Select the Organizational Unit in which you have enrolled managed chrome browsers. This ensures the settings & policies you apply are applied to the correct group.
Search for the setting: Omnibox search provider.
Configure the following settings in the applicable fields:
| Setting | Task |
| “Omnibox search provider name” | Enter the following value:Ecosia |
| “Omnibox search provider keyword” | Set this to "Enabled" and enter the following value:ecosia.org |
| “Omnibox search provider search URL” | Set this to "Enabled" and enter the following value:https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=gsuite |
| “Omnibox search provider icon URL” | https://cdn-static.ecosia.org/static/icons/favicon.ico |
Next search for the setting: Startup
Note: Lock the Omnibox search provider settings to the values below must be set in order for the settings to take effect.
Configure the following settings:
| Setting | Task |
| “Default search provider new tab page URL” | Enter the following value:https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?&addon=gsuite |
See here for more information on configuring an Omnibox default search provider.
Chrome Disclaimer
The Chrome admin console has limited flexibility. You have the option of switching on/off the default search provider and you can only provide one search engine as the default. It is not possible to offer multiple search engines options using Chrome's admin console.
Step 3 - Measure your impact
Tracking your organization's impact and seeing how your searches help plant trees is a big part of motivating teams to use Ecosia. For companies with over 1,000 employees that implement Ecosia using Google Workspace, we can help you to run a pilot and provide a monthly report via email highlighting your impact.
In order for us to track your impact you’ll need to get in touch so we can create a unique identifier called a typetag for your organization.
Once you receive your reporting typetag, IT must simply add &tt= followed by the 8-digit typetag to the end of the URLs used in their deployment policies. The URLs to use are as follows. Replace “xxxxxxxx” with the 8 digit reporting typetag provided to you by Ecosia.
Policy values:
Default search provider name -Ecosia
Default search provider keyword -ecosia.org
Default search provider search URL - https://www.ecosia.org/search?q={searchTerms}&addon=gsuite&tt=xxxxxxxx
Enable the default search provider - Enabled
Configure the homepage URL - https://www.ecosia.org/?addon=gsuite&tt=xxxxxxxx
Configure the new tab page URL - https://www.ecosia.org/newtab/?addon=gsuite&tt=xxxxxxxx
It’s important that you let us know once your IT team has deployed Ecosia. When we begin to attribute traffic to your organization we can schedule your monthly tree-reports. Graph showing the monthly report results.
Here is an example of the report you can expect to receive. Please note that reports show an estimated number of trees, based on the amount of searches sent to us. Trees cannot be used for carbon reporting or offsetting but it’s a great way to track your impact and to keep employees informed and engaged. For more information, please visit our internal comms support article.
Currently we can only provide reporting to organizations with more than 1,000 employees. If your company is under 1,000 employees please refer to our support materials for SMEs. Have any questions? Get in touch with us today and we’ll be on hand to support. Complete our form or book a call with Fred.