Microsoft's Bing is allowing child pornography images to appear in its search results and is aiding paedophiles by suggesting other terms they could search for.

An investigation by AntiToxin, an online safety company, found multiple cases of the illegal images showing up in the search engine's results.

The search engine had the illegal images in results when terms such as “porn kids” or “nude family kids” were typed into Bing, according to the TechCrunch website.

The site’s search suggestions also directed the researchers to child pornography. For example, the term “Omegle Kids”, referring to an video chat app that is popular with children, suggested the search "Omegle Kids Girls 13” which produced illegal imagery.

Another search for “Omegle for 12 year old” prompted Bing to suggest searching for “Kids On Omegle Showing” which led to illegal images.

Bing would also show users additional explicit pictures of children through its "similar images" feature.

Searching for child pornography online is illegal and the investigation took place under the close supervision of lawyers and authorities, Techcrunch said.

Bing says it has removed the images and promised to make changes to how users can report what it calls problematic images and video content.

Microsoft called the search results "unacceptable" and said it had immediately removed them once they had been reported.