Here are just a few statistics from the good people at McAfee (the makers of anti-virus technology ad tracker of nasty web bugs). If you were wondering how likely it was that your next Google search for “HD-DVD Hacks!!” would end up causing your computer to come down with an ichy, scratchy disease here is the information.

Statistics

• Overall, 4.0% of search results link to risky Web sites, which marks an improvement from 5.0% in May 2006. Dangerous sites are found in search results of all 5 of the top US search engines (representing 93% of all search engine use).
• The improvement in search engine safety is primarily due to safer sponsored results. The percentage of risky sites dropped from 8.5% in May 2006 to 6.9% in May 2007. However, sponsored results still contain 2.4 times as many risky sites as organic results.
• AOL returns the safest results: 2.9 % of results rated red1 or yellow2 by McAfee SiteAdvisor. At 5.4%, Yahoo! returns the most results rated red or yellow.
• Google, AOL, and Ask have become safer since May 2006, with Ask exhibiting the greatest improvement. The safety of search results on Yahoo! and MSN has declined.

Web 2.0

You’re still not absolutely safe, but things are getting better.