McAfee’s web site safety software inquiries boom to 100 million a day

Online security company McAfee Inc.’s SiteAdvisor web safety software answered on average more than 100 million unique web safety queries every day in August, the first time the software has reached that level, McAfee reports.

When a McAfee SiteAdvisor user lands on a web site or uses a search engine, the user’s browser queries the SiteAdvisor database for each site’s safety rating. The ratings are displayed as red, yellow and green icons and represent the results of SiteAdvisor’s tests for spam, spyware, exploits and online scams. The icons are designed to help consumers make safe click decisions.

“We’re very pleased how quickly McAfee SiteAdvisor’s Web safety ratings have become an essential part of the web community’s daily life,” says Doug Wyatt, director of engineering. “Daily unique queries to our database have been growing steadily. We answered a massive 3.9 billion queries in the last 30 days alone.”