Courts and government agencies around the world regularly
request that we remove information from Google products.
We review these requests closely to determine if content
should be removed because it violates a law or our product
policies. In this report, we disclose the number of
requests we receive in six-month periods.
Government removal requests by the numbers: All countries / regions
Governments contact Google with content removal requests for a number of reasons. Government bodies may claim that content violates a local law, and include court orders that are often not directed at Google with their requests. Both types of requests are counted in this report. We also include government requests to review content to determine if it violates our own product community guidelines and content policies.
Total removal requests received since 2011
489,007
Total items named for removal since 2011
5,605,014
* 2009 - 2010 data is available in the CSV download file
Total items requested for removal from each Google product or service.
We did not begin providing item counts until the June 2010 reporting period.
Why governments request content removals
Governments ask us to remove or review content for many reasons. Some requests allege defamation, while others claim that content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or adult content. The laws surrounding these issues vary by country/region. Our teams assign each request a category, such as hate speech, obscenity, and defamation. Note that we did not begin providing reason data about the reason for the request until the December 2010 reporting period.
Often times, government requests target political content and government criticism. Governments cite defamation, privacy, and even copyright laws in their attempts to remove political speech from our services. Our teams evaluate each request and review the content in context in order to determine whether or not content should be removed due to violation of local law or our content policies.
YouTube, Web Search, and Blogger are the products with the most frequent government requests to remove content, but dozens of other products are also affected.
This chart shows the top three products and services cited in government requests during the selected reporting period.
Explore requests
Each reporting period, we highlight requests that may be of public interest. These requests provide a glimpse at the wide range of content removal requests that we receive, but they are not comprehensive.
We received 3 requests containing link deletion notices from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner under the Online Safety Act 2021 to remove 9 URLs from Google Search. The notices informed us that content at the URLs concerned material depicting crime, cruelty and violence, and would have been classified as Class 1 Material by the Classification Board as defined under the Online Safety Act.
Outcome
We delisted 9 URLs from Google Search in Australia in response to the link deletion notices from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner.
Australia
Request
We received 8 requests from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s National Anti-Scam Center to investigate 3 Google Ads, 3 Gmail accounts, and 2 Sites URLs for scam and fraud-related offences under the Crimes Act 1958 (VIC) s82(1).
Outcome
We suspended a Google Ads account and removed the related ads from Google Ads for violation of Google Ads Policies, suspended 3 Gmail accounts for violation of Gmail Terms of Service, and removed 1 site for violation of Google Sites Policies. We asked the submitter for more information about the remaining 2 Google Ads (including requesting Ads URLs to help identify the content of concern) and 1 Google Site URL.
Australia
Request
We received a request from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency to remove 1 blog post from Blogger on the basis of a Court Order determining that claims made on the blog were in contravention of s116(1)(b) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Queensland).
Outcome
We removed 1 blog post from Blogger for violation of Blogger Content Policy.
Australia
Request
We received 15 requests from a law firm requesting for removal of 104 URLs from Google Search in Australia on the basis of 15 court orders issued concerning copyright infringement.
Outcome
We delisted 79 URLs from Google Search in Australia in accordance with Google's practices concerning court orders directed at third parties. We asked the submitter for more information about the remaining URLs.
France
Request
We received three court orders that required us to delist a total of 115 URLs from Google Search and to block 157 domains on PublicDNS. The issuing court ruled that the websites at hand were in breach of the plaintiffs' broadcasting rights to sports matches.
Outcome
We complied with the orders and delisted 78 URLs from Google Search in France. The remaining 37 URLs had already been delisted locally. We also blocked all 157 domains from PublicDNS for users in France.
We share this information to shed light on the scale and scope
of government requests for content removals. We hope to draw
attention to the laws and legal processes around the world
that affect access to information online. Share this page on
social media to bring more attention to these laws.