The safety feature on my Google was set to OFF. So, I was not seeing the Michelle Monkey image. With it on Moderate, it appeared...

Michelle Obama 'racist' picture that is topping Google Images removed from blog.

Hot Girls website apologises over 'monkey' picture that had been appearing at the top of Google Images searches

Blog hosting an offensive image of Michelle Obama with monkey features has removed it and posted an apology.

The image, which has been appearing at the top of search results when the words "Michelle Obama" are put into Google Images, was posted on a blog called Hot Girls, which is hosted by the Google-owned blog service, Blogger.

Hot Girls' owner has today removed the image, which appears to have originally been put up with a blog post on 21 October last year, and displayed an apology in Chinese with a very loose English translation.

Google had refused to remove the offensive image from its picture search listings, despite complaints that it is racist, instead opting to run an ad next to it explaining its policy on how search engine results work.

A spokesman for Google said that the Hot Girls blog and image may still temporarily appear when some users make Google Images searches but that it was coming out of the search engine's indexing system.

Earlier today Google's ad explaining why it kept the image in search listings was being sporadically replaced by other ads.

A spokesman for Google UK said the company was looking into why that was happening for some users and that it was not a "deliberate" action to remove the explanation.

"We would generally keep it [the explanation] up for as long as the blog [hosting the content] was up," he added.

Google warned, however, that the image of the US first lady could easily reappear in its listings if another blog posted it.

It is not the first time that Google has taken out explanation ads against search queries. In 2004 when searches for the word "Jew" returned antisemitic website results Google responded with a similar approach.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

FD: I decided to leave it up and make it a lesson to people about posting images that you don't want your mother to see, when she is using a Moderate Search Sitting on her Google.