Tech Tip: Remember to use charity search engines by adding them to your search bar

At this time of year, remembering to give to charity comes into the spotlight, and there are plenty of donation-gathering search engines which use your searches to help raise money from advertisers. Some, like LetThemKnowItsChristmas.com and ClickNow.org offer quick links to help you set them as a homepage, but many let you add them directly to your browser's search bar. Most are Google-powered anyway, so should you need your G-fix, you won't be missing it. Below are some quick tips for adding charity search engines to your search bar, and adjusting the settings so that you use them automatically, all year round.

Many sites will have an "add to searchbar" button or link which will allow you to automatically pop it in the list that you can access by pressing the tiny arrow next to the search engine logo. Three that I found worked perfectly were Everyclick (UK), Magic Taxi (UK) and SearchKindly (US). US site GoodSearch went a step further in having a helpful instruction page for adding to Firefox, IE and Safari. Now comes your bit.

In Firefox, you will be asked whether you plan to set this as a default. If you click on without doing so, it's simple to fix this.

1. Click on the arrow mentioned above to see your list of available search engines. You want to have a charity option at the top, so you need to click on "Manage Search Engines".

2. This will bring up the dialog box shown in the screenshot above which will let you select a search engine and bump it up and down the list. Job done, conscience assuaged.

IE 7 is just as straightforward. When you click on the link to add to the search bar, a dialogue box will come up which will allow you to tick a field to make this new addition your default search engine. Then just click on "Add Provider" and you're pretty much done. Again, if you haven't ticked the box:

1. Click on the dropdown arrow and choose "Change Search Defaults".

2. Pick the charity site you want to make your default and press "Set as Default". Ta-dah!

Note: if you are running Vista and you have security turned up to eleven, you might have to first confirm that you wish to install a new search engine, as it's a little oversensitive to anything you might want to add to your computer.

So there you go. The infinitesimal need for personal involvement means even techphobic friends and relatives are left with no excuse to forget to give this Christmas and, indeed, every day before and after that.