Search engines are getting better at not sending searchers to risky websites, but some are better than others, reports the IDG News Service, citing a McAfee report, which found that some 4 percent of search results were risky, down from 5 percent last year (via MarketingCharts).

AOL has the safest search results, Google has improved, and Yahoo is the riskiest, according to McAfee, which looked at both organic and sponsored links in its update to "The State of Search Engine Safety" report.

"Yahoo's poor performance is due to a spike in the number of sponsored links that McAfee deemed risky. When looking at organic links alone, Yahoo actually had the best results of any of the five search engines, returning risky links just 2.7 percent of the time," writes IDGNS.

Overall, McAfee estimates, U.S. search users conduct approximately 276 million monthly searches that lead to Websites that could compromise online safety.

McAfee studied the five major United States search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask - which account for 93 percent of all search engine use.

Among the study's findings:

• 4.0 percent of all search results link to risky websites
• AOL returns the safest results with 2.9 percent rated red or yellow*, down from 5.3 percent in May 2006. Yahoo returned the most red or yellow results, 5.4 percent.
• Sponsored results contain 2.4 times as many risky sites as organic sites; 6.9 percent of all sponsored results are rated red or yellow - an improvement from 8.5 percent last year, primarily due to Google's improvements in paid search safety.

• Categories related to music and technology remain among the most dangerous search terms: "Digital music" returns the highest percentage of risky sites (19.1 percent), followed by "tech toys" and popular keywords like "chat" and "wallpaper."

MarketingCharts offers more findings and graphics from the study.

*Notes:

1. “Red” rated sites failed McAfee SiteAdvisor’s safety tests.
2. "Yellow” rated sites engage in practices that warrant important advisory information.