New York — Search portal Ask.com , a division of the New York based Inter Active Corp., Tuesday announced a multi-year, strategic alliance with anti-virus software solution provider Symantec to deliver malware-vetted search results with color-coded ratings in an attempt to gain more traffic from security conscious surfers.
Ask and Symantec formulated Safe Search that brings searching the Web safer by providing users with ratings before they visit a site that could damage or infect their computer.
Ask.com stated that Symantec’s latest version of Norton 360 software, due to be released today, will be able to actively rate the security threat of every site which appears in a user’s search results, through a new toolbar.
Safe Search sites will be assigned with a color-coded icon directly into the search results page and allows users to perform searches from their Norton toolbar and view site ratings on a customized results page in one of four colors — Green for Safe, Yellow for Risky, Red for Unsafe, and Gray for Unknown, to help users evaluate if they should visit potentially harmful or malicious sites, said Andrew Moers, president of Ask Partner Network. Placing the cursor over the icon will show more information about the Safe Search rating.
Unsafe sites are those that represents to be something that in reality they are not and shopping sites that lack security or where the merchants are not reputable, according to Moers.
The Web site rating service was launched in beta by Symantec last August.
The search portal is anticipating that the alliance would appear to be attractive for the millions of Norton security software users, who might want the peace of mind over Internet surfing without the risk of being bugged by malware.
“This shift is part of Ask.com’s continuous focus on families to provide them with safe search features and the best content anywhere on the Web,” said Ask.com Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka.
“Our customers will constantly able to see Ask.com innovate with technology that serves consumers with a series of compelling verticals across major search categories in 2009, and beyond.”
Ask is also working on delivering a beta site open up to the public this week, but the site will not have all the functions that the Norton Safe Web rating service does, Moers said.
The service is same as an alert system that Google uses, however Google merely shows several warning messages saying that the site “may be harmful to the computer” but does not assign a safety rating. An error last Saturday led to Google warning temporarily that all sites on the Internet were potentially unsafe.
For Ask.com, this alliance will deliver to customers of the industry’s leading security products to the Ask brand and Ask’s differentiated search experience, provide Safe Search protection to a broad audience of active users, and expand the reach of the Ask Partner Network.
Ask Partner Network has 118 million domestic consumers — 62% of all U.S. Internet users – and 312 million worldwide consumers — 31% of all global Internet users. The APN network of worldwide partners includes a spectrum of industries, including consumer software, online and social media, OEMs and ISPs and mobile companies.
Unfortunately for Ask.com, the search portal is not the only one to consider linking up with a security company. Last year, rival Yahoo forged a partnership with Symantec’s biggest competitor, McAfee.
The partnership also appears to be appropriately-timed, coming just three days after human error caused Google’s web site warning system to flag every site on the Internet as dangerous for a full 40 minutes.
Safe Search is currently available only in English, and is included with Norton Safe Web as part of the Norton 360 version 3.0 public beta. Ask.com also provides adult filtering and re-launched its Ask Kids white list service for children last year. The search portal said it would continue working with Symantec to create offerings that improve search safety.
Financial details about the partnership have not been disclosed.