Sponsored links on search engines more likely to be security risks

McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service has claimed that the sponsored links on search engines are more likely to harbor spyware or adware than regularly indexed websites in search results. They are also more likely to irritate the visiting users with popups and other promotional deals.

And the search engines are generating a lot of revenues through these kinds of sites. As per SiteAdvisor estimates, the search industry made $1.1 billion from such links last year.

They studied some of the most popular search engines used online including Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com and analyzed the results for 1,300 different keyword searches. During the research, they found that about 5 percent of the links served up in the first five pages could infect computers or plague users with spam.

Shane Keats, a market strategist with SiteAdvisor said in a statement on their study: “Most people use search engines as their gateway to the Internet. Search engines are the highway, and you gotta use the highway. We’re just pointing out the potholes.”

The study found out that Microsoft’s MSN Search Engine had the lowest percentage of risky sites while Ask.com had the worst percentage of such sites.

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