MSN is a search engine that has a high level of risk associated with the returned search results, according to data from McAfee. The Santa Clara-based security company has updated its study of search engine safety dating from May 2006. The McAfee study reveals that Yahoo returns the largest volume of dangerous results and that MSN is a close second.

"The investigation, conducted by McAfee SiteAdvisorTM, studied the five major U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and found that the overall chance of clicking through to a risky site declined by 12.0%. Still, McAfee estimates that consumers click through to risky sites more than 268 million times each month. The study was co-authored by Ben Edelman, noted spyware researcher and an advisor to McAfee," stated the security company in a press release.

While 5.1% of the results returned by Yahoo put its users at risk, MSN reveals 4.6% of unsafe results to searches. Google and Ask.com each return a 4.2% risky results, while AOL is the safest search engine with only 3.6% unsafe results. The unsafe results refer to websites that have failed SiteAdvisor's safety tests, by distributing adware, spam and other items of malicious code, as well as sites that engage in various practices that can be interpreted as malicious in nature from sending a high amount of non-spam emails, to displaying popup ads and to asking the users to alter the browser settings.

"It's good to see that clicking on search engine results has gotten modestly safer," said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. "But when almost one of 12 sponsored links still clicks through to a risky site, there remains significant room for continued improvement."

With this report, McAfee delivers a blow to an already down MSN search. Microsoft's search services have been losing their grip on the search market, and MSN/Live Search is down to a share of 8.8%. The conclusion that Microsoft's delivers unsafe searches in a proportion of 4.6%, putting users at risk will not help Microsoft to regain the lost search customer base.