A recent study by Engine Ready, an Internet marketing company, analyzed 18.7 million visits over two years to Web sites run by 27 of the company's roughly 500 clients. The study found that paid listings had a slight edge over "organic," or unpaid, search results: visitors who clicked on paid links were 17 percent more likely to buy something, and they spent about 18 percent more on each order.

But neither of these is the most valuable kind of Web site visitor. That honor goes to the people who arrive at a site by typing its Web address directly into their browsers or clicking on a bookmark. Such visitors, who tend to be repeat customers, linger the longest, spend the most money, and are the most likely to "convert" to buyers, doing so on 3.3 percent of their visits. On average, their visits are worth $5.69 apiece.

Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago. However, few monitor their online presence with great regularity. Just 3% of self-searchers report that they make a regular habit of it and 74% have checked up on their digital footprints only once or twice.

Indeed, most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information. Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online. Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online.

Why do some of my search results say "This site may harm your computer?"

This warning message appears with search results that we've identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer. We want our users to feel safer when they search the web, and we're continuously working to identify such dangerous sites and increase protection for our users.

Malicious software is often installed without your knowledge or permission when you visit these sites. Some examples of malicious software include programs that delete data on your computer, steal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers, or alter your search results. For more information on these types of sites, please visit http://www.stopbadware.org/home/help

Even if you click on the title, you won't be able to visit the site: Google explains you once again that the site could be dangerous and recommends you to visit another search results or to change your query. The only way to visit the site is to copy the URL and paste it in the address bar, which is not an obvious or a trivial task for an ordinary computer user.

Today we launched Google Code Search, which gives programmers a single place to search publicly accessible source code. I am really excited about this launch, as it caps off a long sequence of Google product launches for developers in the past year, including Google Maps API v2, Google Calendar API, Google Web Toolkit, Google AJAX Search API, Google Checkout API, project hosting on Google Code, Google Base API, and Google Gadgets for Your Page. Google's developer team is focused on building tools that help developers extend and improve Google's products and improve their own applications, and we are really excited to see all the amazing things that have been created already (traffic map for your Google homepage, anyone?).

The success of the Google Maps API taught us that an API doesn't need to be complex to be powerful, and that principle has formed the basis of our API design. If you haven't seen how far cut-and-paste can get you, check out the list of sample applications we've published for the AJAX Search API. Or check out the Google Calendar API examples; to get a feed of your calendar entries, you just need to fetch a single URL from Google's servers.

We have also launched a number of general-purpose developer and open-source tools like Google Web Toolkit and project hosting on Google Code. Our view is what's good for the web is good for Google -- we want users to have the best online experience possible, and we hope these tools will help developers create compelling applications for their users.

Three AOL members have sued AOL LLC, the Internet division of Time Warner Inc., saying the company violated their privacy by posting their search queries online, Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo announced today.

The lawsuit is the first class action filed in federal court as a result of AOL's July 31 public release of queries made by hundreds of thousands of AOL members without their permission.

Berman DeValerio (www.bermanesq.com) filed the class action last Friday, September 22, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit, filed as C-06-5866, seeks damages on behalf of all AOL members in the United States whose Internet search query data was disclosed without consent from January 1, 2004 until the present.

"This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant," AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said in a statement. "Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize. We've launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again."

My Web interface will identify specific malware without the Google API. It directly searches Google using fingerprints from executables that we already have," he said.

Moore's project uses code strings, or fingerprints in malware samples, then runs a search on Google for those characteristics.

The search engine has been programmed with about 300 malware signatures and Moore said he plans to add another 6,000 signatures in a future bug fix update.

WARNING! The following links lead to executable programs that can harm your computer. Please be careful when accessing these files and make sure that you only run them in a restricted environment. The signature technique used by this search engine may result in non-malicious files being detected as malware, so be sure to use an updated virus scanner prior to filing a complaint with any web site.

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines know about their users.

"This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared," said Ray Everett-Church, a South Bay privacy consultant. "The idea that these massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario. If they lose this fight, consumers will think twice about letting Google deep into their lives."

A initiative to expose the Google ranking system is under way and has some major backing from the SEO (search engine optimmization), blogging, and web development community, and it's as simple as a contest. The v7n SEO Contest is offering (in one way or another) prize winnings of up to $7,000 plus an iPod if an entrant places in the #1 position in Google for determined keywords. The SEO contest keywords which must sites must be ranked are "V7ndotcom Elursrebmem". v7n.com, which is sponsoring the contest, announced the keywords this week, stating that that Elursrebmem is "Members rule" spelled backwards.

After only a few days, the v7ndotcom elursrebmem contest is starting to gain momentum outside of the SEO corner of the web as major blogs, authority sites, and new V7ndotcom Elursrebmem domains, wikis, Google Base listings, etc. are entering the competition. Speaking of domains, there is already an eBay auction going on right now for the domain name V7nlursrebmem.com. By monitoring the results of the contest, site publishers and SEO practicioners hope to pick apart Google's ranking system and see what makes it tick.

Microsoft is in talks with Time Warner over the sale of AOL or a business partnership, the New York Post reported Thursday. Details of the discussions are murky, but the two companies appear to be discussing a wide array of possibilities, including combining efforts in Internet searching, instant messaging and online advertising, according to the Associated Press

While speculation centered on Microsoft buying all or pieces of AOL, the New York Times reported that Microsoft offered to sell its Internet division to Yahoo and AOL so it could focus on Web searching. The offers ultimately spurred the ongoing discussions with AOL.

Microsoft and AOL declined to comment on the reports.

An alliance between the two companies could result in an even more formidable competitor to Google and Yahoo, both of which have strong head starts over their peers in search technology and online advertising.

One of the most elaborate proposal under discussion would involve combining America Online with the MSN Internet portal and dial-up Internet business, creating the world's largest Internet company. The venture's Web search would be provided by Microsoft. A combination along those lines would be a significant blow to Google, which provides the Web search on AOL's services. This year, 11 percent of Google's revenue came from advertising it placed on AOL sites.

A combination of AOL and MSN would have 18 percent of the search market in the United States, according to Nielsen NetRatings, making it third after Google, with 46 percent, and Yahoo with 23 percent.

The article, by Elinor Mills, a CNET staff writer, gave several examples of information about Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, that could be gleaned from the search engine. These included that his shares in the company were worth $1.5 billion, that he lived in Atherton, Calif., that he was the host of a $10,000-a-plate fund-raiser for Al Gore's presidential campaign and that he was a pilot.

After the article appeared, David Krane, Google's director of public relations, called CNET editors to complain, said Jai Singh, the editor in chief of CNETNews.com. "They were unhappy about the fact we used Schmidt's private information in our story," Mr. Singh said. "Our view is what we published was all public information, and we actually used their own product to find it."

He said Mr. Krane called back to say that Google would not speak to any reporter from CNET for a year.

In an instant-message interview, Mr. Krane said, "You can put us down for a 'no comment.' "

Among the five major search sites -- Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., MSN, America Online Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc. -- Yahoo and Ask Jeeves were cited for making their headings fainter and their disclosure statements harder to find.

"If you want to call attention to something on a page you put headline above it, [but] you don't make it smaller and more faint," said Beau Brendler, director of Consumer Reports WebWatch.

Yahoo also received the most criticism about its paid inclusion program, since it is the only engine among the top five to still use the practice, and because one way it charges included sites is based on the number of clicks on their listings.

Google's Labs and API were held up as exemplars of a modern internet business, while Yahoo was seen as floundering in a sea of accountants, pop-up ads, and Britney Spears. But Yahoo has learned its lesson. Research.yahoo.com, launched last month, is the same idea as labs.google.com - a showcase for new and interesting projects - but it's better. Unlike Google, Yahoo publishes its papers, names its researchers and says what it is up to. One-nil to Yahoo.