How Green is my Website?

How Green is my website?

I have been environmentally-minded for years. As a company, I plant trees to offset my carbon footprint. As a recruitment company and a jobs board, I didn’t think my carbon impact was particularly large, but I want to do my bit.

I admit that I hadn’t considered that websites impacted the environment. After all, they are just things we look at on computers; they don’t create any pollution or leave any waste. Or do they?

Whenever you search for a website or ask a search engine a question, a series of computers talk to each other to answer you. These computers are in large (and I mean large) banks called data centres. Current estimates are that global data centres are responsible for 1% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

With rising energy costs and net-zero targets in mind, great efforts exist to improve efficiency and use renewable energy for these data centres. This is good news, but it is not something my business can control. The only things I can control are my websites – their efficiency and their hosting sites.

How do you find out how well you are doing?

You can use a site like https://ecograder.com. (Other sites are available.)

Enter your URL - https://www.thejobsboard.co.uk/ and see how it performs. I was pleased with my score of 93/100

Ecograder scores pages based on a variety of performance, efficiency, and user experience factors, as well as emissions estimates and green hosting powered by renewable energy.

And I can see what I need my web developers to do to improve my score and make the JobsBoard website more environmentally friendly.

I don’t believe Google ranks results based on eco-friendliness, but it may happen soon. The better designed and built your website is, the higher it will score in terms of being found in searches, which is good for business and the environment.

23/11/23 | Tony Line | Kent Recruitment Bureau | The JobsBoard.