Surfshark study reveals Governments requested Google to remove 330k content units this decade

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.

Global insights: why do governments ask for content removal?