This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that users have been spotting explicit pornographic images on Google web search for a search on hot celebrities (warning: before clicking, take caution). The query triggers Google to show an image search result at the top of the web search results, also known as Google Universal Search.

The pornographic image shows up even though I have my preferences set to block “explicit images.” Note that my preference is the default SafeSearch setting for all Google users. Any user, including children, searching for that keyword will see an extremely explicit pornographic image, at least until Google drops that image out of the index.

Here is a screen capture of my SafeSearch settings:

The BlogBryn blog has a screen capture of the search results with the non-censored version of the image for all to see.

I informed Google and I know the image will be removed soon. But this was not the first time Google found pornographic images in places one would not expect them.

We found porn on Google News not only once, but twice. There are many instances where we have seen these cases pop up.

Related Topics: Google: Images | Google: Universal Search

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz