An image of the Queen has been incorporated into the home-page logo of Google today to coincide with her visit to the company's UK headquarters.

The “Google doodle”, which changes periodically to mark holidays and anniversaries of major events, will feature a profile of the monarch and a crown.

The special logo will appear on the search engine’s British homepage for a day to mark a visit by the Queen to the organisation’s offices in Westminster today. The Queen has embraced technological changes over the decades and last Christmas launched the first Royal Channel on YouTube, the video-sharing website. The channel has 54 royal videos and has been viewed 1.6 million times by internet users.

In 2006 the Queen’s Speech was made available as a podcast for the first time and in 1997 the monarch launched the official royal website during a visit to Kingsbury High School in north west London.

More than 30 years ago the sovereign sent an email for the first time when she visited an Army base in 1976.

Other Google doodles include an image to mark the recent Olympic Games in Beijing, another on June 6 celebrated the birthday of the 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velazquez and a shamrock-covered logo in March marked St Patrick’s Day.

During the visit to Google’s offices the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, will meet Nikesh Arora, president of Google Europe, Middle East and Africa, and senior management.

The royal party will be shown a series of demonstrations explaining Google’s various operations from its popular search engine facility to Google Earth, where users can access detailed maps and satellite images of the planet.

The Queen and Duke will also meet 16 schoolchildren, all winners in a competition to design new doodles for Google.

Later at a reception the royal couple will chat to members of the YouTube community whose videos have proved popular with internet users.

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