Malicious Sites in Web Searches

Malicious Sites in Web Searches

Google is the “go to” search engine when most people want to find something on the internet, and for good reason. An 18-month study from a German testing lab has found that Google search returns about only a fifth the amount of malicious websites as Bing (another popular search engine) does! It’s impressive that Google is so much safer than Bing, but wait, I thought searches aren’t supposed to return any malicious websites? As it turns out, both search engines return a relatively low amount of malicious websites from their searches. However, compared to each other Google significantly outperforms Bing.

Number of malicious sites per search engine

Just how many malicious websites are returned by Google and Bing?

In the study, Google and Bing provided about 10 million websites each. Bing turned up 1,285 malicious websites and Google turned up a very low 272.

Does this mean that I’ll get viruses if I use Bing?

Even though a Bing user is five times more likely to encounter a malicious website than a Google user, the chances of finding a malicious website is still a mere 0.01% (0.002% for Google) which is about 1 in 8,500 (1 in 40,000 for Google). And remember that this is only the chance of finding a malicious website. Most malicious websites require the user to download a program, or give permission for something to be installed.

What else can I do to prevent getting a virus?

Keeping web browsers, software, add-ons, and virus protection up to date are key to avoiding malware. In the rare case a piece of malware can get past all these defenses, it still needs to get through you. Always be skeptical of things on the internet and use your judgment. As one student in my technical writing class said “If the website looks sketchy, get out.”

In the end no one is safe from malicious websites when performing web searches but a lot of things can be done to reduce the chances of getting infected on top of using Google over Bing. Installing anti-virus software, constantly updating software, and staying away from “sketchy” websites all aid in reducing infection. However, as it currently stands, it may be wise for Bing users to switch to Google until Bing can reduce the amount of malicious websites found.