Google Shows Nearly 100 Million Unsafe Browsing Warnings Per Week

The Google Safe Browsing system is designed to warn people from Google’s search results and when using popular browsers if they are about to enter a site deemed unsafe due to suspected malware or phishing attempts. Google’s now sharing figures on how often it warns: currently almost 100 million times per week, along with other […]

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The Google Safe Browsing system is designed to warn people from Google’s search results and when using popular browsers if they are about to enter a site deemed unsafe due to suspected malware or phishing attempts. Google’s now sharing figures on how often it warns: currently almost 100 million times per week, along with other statistics.

The statistics have been added to the Google Transparency Report, where Google has shared information about when it is required to remove content or provide user data due to legal reasons. Now, Safe Browsing statistics are a new area of the report.

Unsafe Browsing

One type of warning Google shows appears within the browser, if someone tries to go to a particular web site deemed dangerous. Here’s an example:

Chrome Malware Warning

On the overview page, a chart shows the number of unsafe browsing warnings that Google has shown to users of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari on a weekly basis, going back to Oct. 31, 2010.The warnings have sharply risen since May, hitting a peak on June 16 of 88,416,377 per week:

Safe Browsing – Transparency Report – GoogleWarnings In Search

Google also shows warnings within its search results, to help people before they even click to a site. Here’s an example of that:

example-harm

A related chart shows the warnings that have been shown within search results. Those warnings have massively dropped from in the past, though recently they’ve had a small rise. They currently total around 60 million per week:

Safe Browsing – Transparency Report – Google-1

Elsewhere in the area are states on unsafe sites that are detected each week, plus there’s a Malware Dashboard section that shows counties that are most hit (India and Malaysia seem to top the list at 14%) plus hosting services or companies that seem most infected (Webair tops the list here, at 43%).

If your site is hit with one of these warnings, Google recently launched a help center with more guidance.

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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