"Can easily be" vs. "can be easily" — what's the difference?

Question

I'm wondering what the difference is between:

• It can easily be obtained.
• It can be easily obtained.

Also, what's the preferred way to write it? If there is any...

I googled for both options between quotes and it returned almost the same result (38 million for "can be easily" and 34 million for "can easily be"), so statistically both have similar usage from the people.

Edit: fixed the second point which I had mistyped as "it easily can be obtained".

Answer 1

I would go with "it can be easily obtained".

"It can easily be obtained" sounds fine, too, but "it easily can be obtained" doesn't. The complete Google stats look as follows:

• "it can be easily obtained" — 1,100,000
• "it can easily be obtained" — 9,120,000
• "it can be obtained easily" — 146,000
• "it easily can be obtained" — 6,520

Searching the British National Corpus returns these results:

• it can easily be — 40
• it can be easily — 20
• it easily can be — 0

Answer 2

Isn't easily describing the action of obtaining? How do you easily "be" anything? And "can be obtained" is just passive and awkward. If you must keep it, then say "It can be easily obtained." But a better way to say it is "You can easily obtain...". It avoids the passivity and solves the problem.

Answer 3

I think it is can easily be. Because once I read that we can use an adverb between two auxiliary verbs.