Google, the Internet search giant, has promised a worldwide block on search results linked to child abuse.
In an about turn the media firm has agreed to make changes which will prevent illegal child pornography appearing for more than 100,000 different searches.
The news comes ahead of Downing Street summit on online pornography later today, when Microsoft, which operates Bing and Yahoo search engines, is expected to announce it is introducing similar terms.
Google says it has developed the technology to tag the illegal images and videos so that all duplicates can be removed across the Internet.
The restrictions will be launched in the UK first, before being expanded to other English-speaking countries and 158 other languages in the next six months.
A further 13,000 search terms linked with child sex abuse will flash up with warnings from Google and charities telling the user that the content could be illegal and pointing them towards help.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, said: ‘We’ve listened. We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results.”
