Search engine Google is investigating how a link to an Italian paedophile site managed to get to one of the top spots on its searches for information about the Vatican.

According to AP, the link surfaced early Saturday,although the site was actually empty. A spokesman for Google Italy, Simona Panseri, told AP it was not clear if this was a result of hacking. He said that he could not confirm if this was an attack at the moment because he was still waiting for more precise information from the US engineers to understand the nature of the problem.

It would make sense if it was the action of a hacker group which was determined to highlight allegations of abuse by paedophile priests and allegations of high-level cover-ups in several European countries, after similar scandals swept Australia and the United States in 2004. However the fact that hackers have managed to fiddle with Google's algorithm to suit there own ends much cause the outfit to wake up in a hot sweat.