On Tuesday, Yahoo and McAfee announced a partnership to manufacture the Yahoo Search experience safer. Launched in beta, the new SearchScan feature, powered by McAfee SiteAdvisor technology, offers always-on alerts for sites with safety measure concerns involving spyware, adware and other malicious software. McAfee SiteAdvisor tests and rates nearly every trafficked site on the World Wide Web.

SearchScan plus identifies sites that have shown poor e-mail practices, flooding user inboxes with spam. SearchScan is available for Yahoo Search users in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

“The new SearchScan feature from Yahoo Search makes searching the Web even safer than ever before,” said Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search. “No other search engine today offers that level of warning before visiting sites that can damage or infect a user’s PC and cost them valuable date and money.”

Under the Hood

Here’s how it works: By

integrating McAfee’s technology into Yahoo Search, sites that may harm a user’s computer just by visiting them will be eliminated from appearing in Yahoo Search results. SearchScan plus alerts users to potentially risky sites with a red warning sign in search results, allowing users to proceed with caution. During that beta period, SearchScan displays McAfee alerts optimal for the Yahoo Search user and does not include all McAfee SiteAdvisor red ratings.

After children’s safety, 65 percent of Americans online are more worried about clicking unsecured search listings than the threat of neighborhood crime, getting one’s wallet stolen or e-mail scams, according to a Decipher Inc Online shield & Web Search consumer survey conducted in March.

“Research indicates that four out of five Web-site visits start with a search, and consumers who use Yahoo Search will now be alerted to high-risk Web sites,” said Tim Dowling, McAfee vice president, Web shield…

Orginal post by Top Tech News