Google is being accused of double standards after a decision to censor the placement of ads for a dating site catering for "cougars" - older women who seek the company of younger men.

The internet company has taken an unusually moralistic standpoint on advertisements for the cougar dating website, refusing to serve the company's ads into third-party websites because it deems them "unsafe for family audiences".

CougarLife founder Claudia Opdenkelder, 39, with her partner Paul, 25. Below: the home page of the dating site deemed to risque by Google.

The ads are for CougarLife, a Canadian-owned dating service that "pairs women in their prime with younger men".

Claudia Opdenkelder, the founder of the dating site, said Google told her that ads promoting this type of liaison would no longer appear in the 6700 non-Google websites into which the text and banner ads were served. The ads had been running since last October.