Every time you search the internet, the search engine you use rakes in advertising revenue. Use Everyclick.com and half that cash could go to the UK charity of your choice. The average user earns his or her chosen charity 1p per search. For keen surfers, that means a pound or two a month or about £20 a year.

Everyclick was founded in 2005 to tap the increasingly lucrative search-engine market for good causes. Polly Gowers, 39, the website’s co-founder, says that, collectively, internet users could make millions of pounds a month for charity by setting the site as their homepage and using it as their everyday search engine.

To make Everyclick your homepage, click on the house-shaped icon at the top right of the main page. Searches are powered by Ask.com and give quality text and image results. It lacks the convenience of Google — with its quick links to a range of search options — but should answer the needs of most nontechie users.

You can register at the website to nominate a beneficiary charity from a comprehensive database of 170,000 UK organisations. You can also use the site without registering or choosing a charity. Money raised that is not earmarked for specific causes — currently about 50 per cent — is pooled and split between all active charities.

The site’s charity database tells you how many Everyclick supporters each charity has and how much money they have raised so far.

The Dame Hannah Rogers School is typical of the smaller charities benefiting from Everyclick. In eight months 19 signed-up supporters have made £112.18 for the charity that provides support, care and education for children and adults with disabilities in Devon and Cornwall. Paul Courtney, the charity’s fund-raising manager, says: “We have 1,000 listed supporters, so 19 using the search engine is just a start. The joy is that it’s money for nothing.”

Mr Courtney hopes to persuade local schools and businesses to set Everyclick as their search page and nominate his charity for payment.

The search engine has already been adopted by some big corporate players: the London Stock Exchange, AXA Life and Cadbury Schweppes.

Everyclick users can shop online at the site to make more no-cost donations. Access eBay through the site to earn your charity between 5p and 6p per bid. Other affiliated shopping sites include Amazon, Expedia and Hertz, which each pay 2.5 per cent of sales. Thomas Pink gives 5 per cent, while Excel airways pays £5 for each sale.

The website has made £140,000 for charity, but Ms Gowers predicts donations of £500,000 a month by the end of the year and £2 million a month by the end of next year.

CASE STUDY: Cash there for the asking

Matt Hallett, of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, is an A-level student and regularly uses the internet for research and leisure. In January he raised £8.90 for his school’s parents’ association using Everyclick as his default search engine after coming across the site while browsing the web. He says that the switch from Google was painless — he found the Ask-powered results just as good.

The 18-year-old says that his headmaster’s eyes “lit up” when he heard about the site and worked out that the charity could make £50,000 a year with an uptake of only half the school’s 900 pupils. The school, Alcester Grammar, is now considering making Everyclick the standard homepage across its network of PCs. Mr Hallett’s family are converts and he is encouraging friends to join. “It’s a brilliant idea,” he says.