Google refuses to remove filth from site

Feb 14 2003 By David Holmes, Chester Chronicle

INTERNET search engine company Google does not appear willing to remove a disgusting web site from its contents.

Last week The Chronicle told how a web expert accidentally stumbled across the paedophile site while searching for accommodation in Chester.

The site appeared at number two in the list of options because the author goes under the warped name of 'Chester the Molester'.

Google's US press office agreed to initiate an investigation but suggested the site would not be removed because it was not illegal.

Despite numerous emails and phone calls Google has not responded to our request for an update on the situation.

But a concerned reader did receive a reply after emailing Google with this message: 'I assume that Google does not want to be a party to child abuse. I call on you to delete this site from the Google indexing so that it is not accessible to searchers.'

He received this reply from 'The Google team'.

'We recognise the annoyance that this situation may cause you, but there is nothing that Google can do to remove the offending content without the cooperation of the site administrator.

'Google is a provider of information, not a mediator. Even if we were able to eliminate the offending page from our index, it would still be on the web.

'Every few weeks our robots sweep the web for content. If the site is still available on the web when we crawl, we will likely pick it up and add it to our index again. Only an administrator can, by including code that blocks our robots or placing a request with us, prevent his/her page from being listed.

'Without administrator cooperation we cannot exclude material available on the internet from our index.'

The reader, who prefers to remain anonymous, commented: 'Personally, I think the Google response is feeble they claim to be totally at the mercy of their automatic indexing.