Google: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa search interest increases in last five years

Nitin Gajria, Managing Director, Google Africa, on Tuesday said that the search interest on private browsing increased in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Gajria said at the Africa Ads Privacy immersion for press in Lagos that search in private browsing increased in Kenya by 110 per cent, Nigeria by 60 per cent and South Africa by 30 per cent.

He said that such increase was important and beneficial to businesses in Africa which would serve as a boost to the economy.

Our correspondent reports that private browsing is a privacy feature in some web browsers.

When operating in such a mode, the browser creates a temporary session that is isolated from the browser’s main session and user data.

The managing director said that Kenya is the 15th country in the world that searched most for private browsing in the last five years and the African country that searched most for the topic.

According to him, 2022 was the year Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria searched most for private browsing since
2012.

“Today 66 per cent of the world is online, the advert-supported internet model has become a remarkable resource for humanity, putting an explosion of tools, information and content at our fingertips.

“As people manage more of their lives online, their concerns over how personal data is gathered, used, and shared, have grown.

“In the last five years, search interest in private browsing increased by +60 per cent in Nigeria, +30 per cent in South Africa, and+110 per cent in Kenya.

“Make no mistake, this is important for businesses in Africa to acknowledge and respond to,” he said.

According to him, people want great online experiences – delivered with the privacy they deserve, by brands they can trust.

He said that impact of a negative privacy experience outweighs that of a positive one, so once the damage is done, it would be hard to bring customers back.

Brian Crowler, a Software Engineer, said that gave an overview why ads are necessary in the world.

Crowler said that bad advert were stopped from getting to the users in the first place.

According to him, from 2018 to 2021, millions of bad adverts have been removed, publishers terminated and advert accounts suspended.

He said that in 2018, 2.3 million bad adverts were removed, 2019, 2.7 million bad adverts removed, 2022, 3.1 billion and 2021, 5.7 billion bad adverts were removed.

Mustapha Haruna, in his presentation on Legal removal vs Policy removal, said that a bad advert could be removed if it allegedly violates the laws of a country or allegedly violate Google policy.