Today we released The Safety of Internet Search Engines - Revisited, a follow up report to our study from May comparing the safety of leading search engines. Co-authored by Ben Edelman, this study uses McAfee SiteAdvisor’s safety ratings to evaluate the safety of search results for popular keywords at the top five U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask). We also compare organic and sponsored search results and assess the risks of searching for keywords in various categories.
Key Findings:
• All the major search engines return risky sites in their search results for popular keywords. On average across all keywords, 4.4% of search results link to risky Web sites.
• AOL returns the safest results with 3.6% of results rated red or yellow by McAfee SiteAdvisor. At 5.1%, Yahoo! returns the most results rated red or yellow.
• 8% of sponsored results are rated red or yellow – almost three times the 3.0% of organic results rated red and yellow. Notably, scam sites are found at a much greater frequency in sponsored results.
• Overall riskiness of search engines declined by 12%, while the percentage of red and yellow sites in sponsored ads decreased half that amount.
Results in Perspective
We are encouraged to find that the incidence of risky sites in search results has declined from 5.0% to 4.4%. But search engine users still face dangerous sites at an alarming frequency. US users conduct an estimated 6.1 billion searches per month. If we conservatively assume that each search yields one and only one click to one of the sites listed in the results, then even a 4.4% incidence of red/yellow sites would mean 268 million clicks to dangerous sites every month from search engines. And it only takes a single visit to a dangerous site for a user to face serious and lasting consequences. One nasty download can clutter a user's PC with intrusive spyware or pop-up-serving adware. One misused e-mail submission can threaten the privacy of personal information and lead to a never-ending influx of spam. And worst of all, simply browsing to an exploit site can lead to security breaches and uncontrollable changes to a user’s PC.
To Search or Not to Search
We’re not advising anyone to stop using search engines -- we use them ourselves every day, many times a day. Search engines offer a fast and easy way to navigate the Web. But our study shows that consumers cannot rely on search engines to keep them safe. And they certainly shouldn’t assume that search ads are safer than non-sponsored results.
Search engines have made some progress in improving the safety of their results, and we applaud those efforts. We hope this study spurs further improvements.
The full report: The Safety of Internet Search Engines - Revisited (December 2006)
