Vincent Tabak did online research on sexual offences after killing Joanna Yeates, Bristol crown court heard on Wednesday.

Among the phrases Tabak Googled were "sexual offence explained" and "definition of sexual assault", the jury was told.

The 33-year-old Dutch engineer, who admits manslaughter but denies murder, also carried out internet searches on the average sentences for manslaughter and for murder, it was claimed.

A police analyst described the online searches Tabak carried out after killing the 25-year-old landscape architect, whose body was found on a snowy roadside verge on Christmas morning last year.

Lyndsey Farmery said that on the day after Yeates went missing — December 17 — Tabak was doing research on subjects including the five-day weather forecast.

Next day he looked at online maps and images of Longwood Lane, the road three miles from her Bristol flat where her body was discovered.

In subsequent days Tabak looked at news articles on Shrien Dewani, the Bristol man accused of hiring hitmen to kill his wife in South Africa, and the case of Melanie Hall, who was murdered after leaving a nightclub in Bath in 1996.

Later, the jury was told, he researched subjects including: "How does forensic identification work?" and the location of CCTV cameras in Canynge Road, Clifton, where Tabak and Yeates lived.

He researched "body decomposition time" and an article about a man who strangled his wife and pleaded diminished responsibility.

When police revealed they were sifting tonnes of rubbish he looked up details of household waste collection in Bristol.

Tabak, who denies murder but admits manslaughter, also spent time finding out about prison life in the UK. In addition he searched online for phrases including the "definition of sexual assault", "definition sexual conduct" and "sexual offence explained".

The trial continues.