According to a global Surfshark’s study, governmental requests for content removal climbed to nearly 330k, with an annual average growth rate of 34% since 2020. Starting at over 44,000 requests in 2020, this number surpassed 100,000 by 2023, indicating that the volume of requests has more than doubled.
“Government requests to remove content from Google shed light on the legal rules that govern online access to information. These requests often focus on political content or criticism of government actions. To justify such restrictions, governments typically cite laws related to defamation, privacy and security, or copyright. Google reviews each request carefully to determine if the content breaks any laws or violates its policies before deciding how to proceed,” says Emilija Kucinskaite, Senior Researcher at Surfshark.
Top countries by Google content removal requests

Since 2020, nearly 330k requests have been submitted, originating from almost 150 countries, with an annual average growth rate of 34%.

In this decade, 3 countries have accounted for around 80% of the total content removal requests.

Russia accounts for 64% of the total, with over 211,000 requests (almost 130 per day).

South Korea is second, with 10% of requests, totaling nearly 33,000 requests or approximately 20 per day.

India follows with 5%, translating to almost 16,000 requests or around 9 per day.

Among the top 15 with the highest number of Google removal requests are also Taiwan, Turkey, Brazil, Bangladesh, France, Pakistan, the United States, Australia, Germany, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia.

Notably, of all countries or regions not in this list (about 90% of all countries) submitted fewer than one request per day on average.

Courts and government agencies may request to remove content from Google products and services — from Blogger and Google Translate to Gmail. However, this decade, the majority of requests have been directed towards YouTube, which accounts for 54% of requests. Web Search is in second place accounting for 31% of requests. Together, these two platforms account for 85% of the received content removal requests.
Global insights: why do governments ask for content removal?
Each request is categorised by reason, with over 20 different grounds for requesting content removal from Google products or services. This decade, the three most common reasons have been National Security, with over 96,000 requests; Copyright, with nearly 71,000 requests; and Privacy and Security, with more than 37,000 requests. Together, these three reasons account for over 60% of content removal requests globally.
Privacy and Security requests primarily focus on Web Search, YouTube, and Google Images;
Defamation-related requests are mainly directed at YouTube, Web Search, and Local Reviews;
Fraud-related requests predominantly target Google Ads, YouTube, and Web Search.
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