Microsoft search engine Bing is five times more likely than Google to give you malicious search results, though in both cases the number of malicious sites was a tiny portion of the total search results.
That’s the conclusion of an 18-month study released early this month by the AV Test Institute in Germany. The Magedburg-based vendor of security software studied search engine results from August 2011 to February 2013 and found that Bing coughed up 1,285 malicious websites out of 10,958,207 websites tested.
Google, on the other hand, delivered only 272 malicious results out of 10,912,207 websites tested.
Russian search engine Yandex delivered more malicious websites in top search results than Google and Bing combined. Yandex, which launched in 1997 and serves about 60 percent of the Russian search market, delivered 3,330 malicious websites out of the 13,690,659 websites tested through Yandex.
Over 40 million total websites were delivered as search engine results during the test period. Search engines Blekko, Faroo, Teoma and Baidu were also tested as part of the study.
“It is important to remember that Google alone deals with a phenomenal total of 2 to 3 billion search requests worldwide every day,” wrote Markus Selinger of the AV Test Institute.
The study comes at a time when Microsoft has resumed its aggressive campaign to lure search engine users away from using Google to Bing.
Microsoft did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.