Santorum: Google spreads 'filth'

A Google search for Santorum has generated some inappropriate results since gay columnist Dan Savage organized an online campaign to link graphic sexual terms to the socially conservative senator’s name.


Now, the Republican presidential candidate says he’s convinced Google could do something to remedy the issue, if the company wanted to.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle but I suspect that's not true.”

Santorum has acknowledged his widely covered “Google problem” in the past, but his contact with the company is a newer development.

UPDATE: A Google spokesperson responded to Santorum by advising that users who want "content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly."

"Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly," the spokesperson said. "Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process."

The spokesperson said that Google does not "remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."

( with Dan Hirschhorn)