According to the studies of the German Antivirus testing company AV-test, Bing from Microsoft, delivers as much as 5 times more malware containing websites as its top search results compared to Google. The research included 40 million sites and spanned through 18 long months. The report was published on 12th of April, but refute from Microsoft came on April 19th claiming that the researchers used the API of the search engine to perform searches instead of using the Bing.com directly.
David Felstead, Senior Program Manager, Bing, responded that actually the search engine prevents users from clicking on the malware infected websites by disabling the URL, and showing a message below the link to stop the users from accessing the infected sites; by using the API, the test bypassed the warning system designed for the users. He also added that most of these sites are legitimate sites that have been hacked, and Bing cannot exclude them for the purpose of completeness of the search results. Instead, it shows a warning for the users attempting to click on the site.
According to Felstead, the internal data of the company shows that the malware warning system of the search engine discourages 94 per cent of the users to click on the malware infected sites, and it is only 0.04 per cent of all the search results that shows a malware warning on it thus making the chance of clicking a malware infected site really low. He added, detecting malwares on the websites is a complex issue, and no search engine can perform this job 100 per cent accurately. Bing shows the warning to the users, but at the same time include the sites in the search results, so that the users do not again perform the search on Google and attempt to click the malware infected links, as Google do not come with any malware warning messages.
In this context it is to be noted, Microsoft Security Essentials, the free antivirus software from Microsoft, have repeatedly failed the AV-Test from its inception, and not only that, it was the only antivirus that could not pass the cut of the German security and research AV-test last year.