A security firm on Tuesday issued a warnings saying that online scammers are now taking advantage of the general population's interest in Google to spread malware. Known as "SEO poisoning", the process involves scammers using "search engine optimization techniques to increase the distribution of malware".

To serve the purpose, as warned by the online security company, scammers come up with special "malware-rigged" sites or hide undesirable material on legitimate sites that they have compromised, and then use tags associated with popular search query terms to get these malicious sites listed higher in search engines.

"As you probably know, the use of popular search terms to target malware is neither a new vector nor unique to any particular search engine. We work hard to protect our users from malware, and using any Google product to serve malware is a violation of our product policies", said a Google spokesperson.

A research scientist at Barracuda Networks, Dave Michmerhuizen has revealed that he has alone managed to identify as many as 31 poisoned sites among the first 100 search results, and 27 of them were crammed in the first 50 results.