Google have today announced measures that will block people searching for abusive images and in particular, child abuse images.

The don’t stop at just blocking searches though, they’ve taken action blocking thousands of videos and images that are known to contain abusive images.

The extent to which Google has committed themselves to this campaign is such that over 100,000 phrases related to abuse have been blocked. This has been coupled with the ability to “tag” known videos and images as duplicates of previously blocked material.

These changes directly affect Google’s search engines across the glove and in over 150 languages.

After growing unease and calls for the internet giant to do more, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt says “we’ve listened” and that’s the reason why these measures have been taken. He went on to say:

“We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results.”

This all comes before Google’s meeting with the Prime Minister where representatives of Microsoft and BT will also be present.

Blog Post by Greg McVey