Many of the website which the major internet search engines direct users to are unsafe, a new report suggests.

McAfee's search engine safety study found that the overall safety of search results returned Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask increased by around one per cent this year.

Despite this, the survey still found that four per cent of all searches directed the user to a site which McAfee deemed 'risky' because of its use of adware, spyware, viruses and other IT nuisances.

AOL was found to return the safest result - just 2.6 per cent of its returns were deemed dangerous in some way.

In contrast, 5.3 per cent of Yahoo!'s searches returned potentially dangerous sites.

''We're encouraged to see some improvement in search engine safety this year," said Tim Dowling, of McAfee SiteAdvisor.

"But with four out of five web site visits starting with a search engine query, consumers are still exposed to hundreds of millions of risky searches per month.

"In fact, an active search engine user, one that performs more than ten searches per day, is likely to visit a dangerous site at least once a day."

This research shows that small businesses need to make sure they are protected against IT risks as more and more workers use the internet to do their job.