The marketing director of a Jewish heritage museum in America has hit out at Google after it emerged that the museum was paying the search engine to prevent a neo-Nazi website from appearing as the top result for the query “did the Holocaust happen?”.

David Schendowich from the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, said that it was “nauseating” that Google was directing users to the white supremacist site, adding that the museum was paying the search engine redirect web users to its own site.

“They may not take money from people denying the Holocaust, but the point is that museums and other organisations are paying to combat this stuff. They plainly are. We are. We’re paying them up to $2 a click”, he said.

The director of the Breman Museum, Aaron Berger, said that according to the Southern Law Poverty Centre, Atlanta was the fourth-worst state in the US for active hate groups.

A Google spokesman said last week: “We never want to make money from searches for Holocaust denial and we don’t allow regular advertising on those terms.

“We have no interest in profiting from sites or organisations that promote hate, which is why we ban them from using our ads systems. Under some circumstances we allow advertising against offensive terms, typically by organisations whose mission involves educating people about the issues. Those organisations can and do apply for Ad Grants – free advertising to drive awareness and promote educational messages. We give hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free advertising to non-profit organisations through our Ad Grants programme.”