It’s slightly safer than it used to be to use search engines, but about 4 percent of search results still lead to sites deemed risky, a new study finds.

Ben Edelman, a security expert who serves as an adviser to security software vendor McAfee Inc., said that although the overall riskiness of search engines declined 12 percent since May, some 4.4 percent of results still lead to sites flagged with a “red” warning or a cautionary “yellow” by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service.