Whether you're browsing organic cotton clothes, seeking instructions to make your own biodiesel, or simply looking for the day's eco news, Green Maven's got it all. The green search engine first launched in November 2006, and has been growing ever since. Plenty caught up with Green Maven's founder, Joey Shepp, to talk about how going green can start with the click of a mouse.

How did Green Maven get started?

The idea for Green Maven originated while I was doing a green MBA program. We had just read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. We were thinking the environmental movement really needed strategic marketing to push it over the tipping point. So we [Shepp and other students in his MBA program] came up with this idea of Green Maven as a sort of think tank, and I bought the domain name. Meanwhile, I was building directories of green businesses—green festivals, exhibitors, bookmarks, blogs, all kinds of things. So I looked for a way to leverage those assets into something that was useable for my friends and family and the consumer world. In the fall of last year, Google announced its Co-op search engine (link here), which allows people to create their own search engines out of a subset of websites they define. We decided to leverage the directory and put it into Google’s Co-op. We tried it out, and it was amazing. The results were incredibly relevant.

How do you think the site will benefit the average, everyday user?

It makes being green very simple by putting it into a context that people understand—that of Internet searching. Everybody’s gateway to the Internet is either Google or Yahoo, so it’s a very familiar aspect. Moreover, it allows people to not have to know all the adjectives that describe the green movement. You can type in “socks” and get “organic socks.” You can put in “car” and you’ll get “hybrid car.” People can search for all the things they normally do and not have to know all the different green adjectives. So for people who don’t even know the right questions to ask, it really makes it easy.

I noticed that Green Maven runs news and blogs from other websites. Where does this content come from and what other websites do you work with?

In addition to being a green search engine, we’re also an aggregator. We have more than 35 news channels right now, including Treehugger, Inhabitat, Worldchanging, Greenbiz. We pull in just the intro to their news and then we link back to their websites. We’re really about promoting these news sources and promoting their brands.

Are you planning on adding any other features to the site in the future?

One exciting one coming up is our green map, where you’ll be able to search across a map just like Google maps for green businesses and websites. We’re looking to continue to aggregate all different types of green information on the web. Soon we’re going to open it up for businesses to submit press releases and news to the network. We’re looking to help these businesses market to the green consumer through the green search engine and through the news. Over time, we are going to allow it to be more user generated. In the future we’re going to allow users to rank the green websites coming in.

How has the response been from users so far?

Great. We were named the number 9 best new website in 2006 by Time.com. Users have been incredibly supportive by putting links up on their own blogs. We’ve got a little card that we hand out at events like green festivals and all we have to say is “green search engine” and people really get it. It’s like the missing piece they’ve been wanting for a long time.

 

 

Posted on Apr 30, 2007 at 4:30 PM
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