As many as 100,000 search terms will now return no results that find illegal material, and will trigger warnings that child abuse imagery is illegal. PM David Cameron has welcomed the move but said it must be delivered or he would bring forward new legislation. Child protection experts have warned most images are on hidden networks.
In July, Mr Cameron called on Google and Microsoft's Bing - which together account for 95% of search traffic - to do more to prevent people getting access to illegal images. He said they needed to ensure that searches which were unambiguously aimed at finding illegal images should return no results. The issue of online images showing the sexual abuse of children has made headlines in recent months after the convictions of Stuart Hazell and Mark Bridger for the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones.
Both Hazell and Bridger were known to have sought out and viewed child abuse images online. On Monday, Downing Street said the government would be checking to see that internet companies acted "urgently" .
Google and Microsoft joined other internet firms, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and charities at Downing Street for an internet safety summit earlier. At the meeting, the NCA's director general said initial tests showed that changes introduced by the search engines were working. The prime minister told the meeting the UK would hold an international summit on the issue next year, with a "specific focus on protecting the victims of online child abuse".
Source: BBC News
