Several readers contacted the Herald yesterday after their online searches for Olympics tickets on google.com.au returned sites that included www.beijing-2008tickets.net, a site that states it is run by a company from the Seychelles called Beijing-2008tickets.

The site promises "official tickets" to sold-out Olympic events including the opening ceremony, which it says will be shipped to customers three to five days before the event takes place.

The site, which features the same Beijing 2008 logo and masthead as the official Chinese ticketing site, provides no address, phone numbers or other business information.

Until yesterday afternoon the site appeared among paid-for sponsored-links websites on Google's Australian search engine.

When the Herald raised concerns about the site with Google yesterday, a spokesman said it was unaware of the problem. "This is the first I've heard of it," said Rob Shilkin, head of corporate communications at Google Australia. "If they're appearing as sponsored links, that would be a plain violation of our policy."

Google's advertising policy prohibits placements by any company which scams customers for personal or financial information.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, sponsored links to the site and several others promising tickets had been removed from the list, pending a full investigation.

The chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Competition, Graeme Samuel, said Google could not be held responsible for anyone who had been duped by a site listed in the sponsored links if it did not know they were fraudulent.

"Unless it it can be shown they knew about the nature of the sites, Google can claim the publisher's defence," he said.