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The Dark Side of Paid Search

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the is-the-darkside-stronger-no-no-quicker-easier dept.

Tough Lefty writes "A new study by McAfee's SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The key findings were that major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords and sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results. Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Click on dubious links... by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...get something you didn't bargain for.

    Really, is this even remotely news?

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  2. Re:That's good. by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a libertarian, you shouldn't care if someone's selling rat poison as viagra.

    Yea, who needs a centralized protection. It's all natural. See AIDS for example. It's not as if having no immune system affects your life or anything.