Researchers Ben Edelman and Hannah Rosenbaum set about analysing websites that were returned for 1,394 popular keyword searches via the Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask search engines. The search results were then analysed using the 'Site Advisor' security tool, a piece of software that warns users that the site they are browsing is known to be dangerous.
It maybe well know in today's online community that visiting sites offering gambling, porn or free downloads place users at risk of spam, spyware, adware and other forms of dangerous downloads. The research carried out highlighted that users searching for innocuous subjects are also at risk. The report outlines that 64% of sites returned were flagged as potentially dangerous and causing problems to users.
The 'Site Advisor' tool flags sites according to their danger level to users with the most benign pages normally attempting to change the users browsers setting, redirecting users to advertising sites, and the most dangerous swamping users in spam or downloads packed with adware or spyware. The report found one site in particular which resulted in a test email address set up for the study receiving over 300 spam messages a week.
Creators of sites deemed dangerous use various methods to install software on user's machines without their knowledge, resulting in hacking or the loss of important data for the users; these methods include exploiting security flaws or loopholes in web browsers. "Where internet users go, attackers follow" states the report which demonstrated that across all searches approximately 4-6% of sites returned in the research were dangerous. This may not seem a huge percentage but in practice when compared to the facts that American users carry out almost 6 billion searches a month, this percentage is equivalent to 285 million clicks on these dangerous site every month.
To demonstrate the danger to the everyday net users the authors wrote "Even a single visit to a dangerous site can have serious and lasting implications for the average internet user". The report goes further and draws attention to the companies who promote these sites by highlighting that the number of dangerous sites increases when user click on them as these sites are two to four times more common within sponsored search results, something that search engine optimisation companies will be more than aware of.
The importance of this report to search engine optimisation companies becomes clear when the research addresses those keywords which return dangerous results to users. The riskiest search terms found were mainly associated with downloads, such as screensavers and free ring tones, along with terms covering file sharing, including bearshare and limewire. It was found by the report that searching under these categories returned a high proportion of dangerous sites.
While many online companies will be reading these findings with great interest the authors highlight the magnitude of their finding in their closing statement, "we're alarmed by the scope of these problems - by the many ways search engines lead users to sites that turn out to be untrustworthy or worse" concluded the report.
