The safety risk to search engine users declined by about one percentage point according to a study from McAfee, "The State of Search Engine Safety." Sites that offer adware, spyware, viruses and exploits are considered risky.
Overall, McAfee estimates that U.S. user's conduct 276 million searches each month that lead to Web sites that could put users security at risk.
The study found that 4 percent of all search results link to risky Web sites.
File sharing programs were also among risky keywords. Dangerous file sharing searches include "Bearshare" (45.9 percent risky results), "limewire" (37.1 percent) and "kazaa" (34.9 percent). "We're encouraged to see some improvement in search engine safety this year. But with four out of five Web site visits starting with a search engine query, consumers are still exposed to hundreds of millions of risky searches per month," said Tim Dowling, vice president, Consumer Growth Initiatives,
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