285 Million Clicks to Unsafe Sites Through Search Queries

285 million clicks are directed to potentially unsafe websites through search queries every month, according to a research by Ben Edelman of McAfee.

285 million clicks are directed to potentially unsafe websites through search queries every month, according to a research by Ben Edelman of McAfee.

Other key findings include:

“¢ All major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask, showed risky sites in their search results for keywords.
“¢ Potentially risky sites have increased 72% as a result of popular keywords, including “free screensavers”, “digital music”, “popular software”, and “singers”.

The research also found that, on average 8.5% of sponsored links were potentially risky and 3.1% of non-sponsored links were risky.

Chris Dixon, head of McAfee SiteAdvisor product team, said: “Search engines clearly play a critical role in Internet use: As a convenient starting point for online browsing, they’re estimated to account for about half of all site visits.

But economically motivated purveyors of spam, adware and other online problems quickly follow where consumers go online, in this case directly to search engine results. Today, based on browsing trends, we estimate that U.S. Internet users make 285 million clicks to hostile sites every month through search queries.” [Source]

Ask.com had 6.1% of dangerous sites in its search results, while Google had 5.3%. MSN had the lowest (3.9%).

The research was conducted using McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. SiteAdvisor evaluates the safety of trafficked sites on the internet. The software also warns users when a potentially unsafe site is discovered.

For more information on “The Safety of Internet Search Engines” research report, click here.

To download McAfee SiteAdvisor, click here.