The IWF analysed 51,186 reports from its hotline, with around a quarter of those confirmed as criminal content within the group’s remit.

Less than one per cent of the illegal images and videos were hosted in the UK, with over half stored in North America and most of the rest in Europe and Russia.

Image hosts were the most often exploited to upload child pornography, being used as often as banner sites, file hosts, social networks and general websites combined.

The foundation will recruit seven more analysts, who investigate reports to determine the severity of the crime, age of the victim and hosting location of images.

IWF CEO Susie Hargreaves said: "We have now more than doubled our analyst team thanks to a £1m Google grant and an increase in our funding by IWF Members."

Hargreaves added that members of the IWF were quicker to remove the images once they were found than non-members, claiming they were more aware of their "online responsibilities".

The IWF has authority to issue takedown notices to British hosting providers, working with the police to preserve investigative evidence, and is responsible for a URL blacklist distributed to ISPs, mobile operators and search providers.

Last autumn it tested warning splash pages for those accessing webpages on the blacklist, and launched an online reporting scheme in Mauritius that it hopes to extend globally.

In 2014 the foundation will begin to actively seek out child pornography, develop a hashtag database for criminal images and tackle the use of torrent networks in exchanging illegal pornography.