Google-sponsored digital billboards around the city have a surprising revelation: the brightly colored boards featuring popular search terms declare that the United Kingdom “is searching for revenge porn sites”.

This advertisement tells the public that among the more mundane queries on the search engine, there is also a darker side to online searching. It turned out that revenge porn, the distribution of sexually explicit content without the consent of the persons involved, became a top term tapped into keyboards.

Apparently, not many people knew about this, and their reaction differed: while one was saying: “Good to know. Thanks Google”, another person claimed it was a depressing advertising. Many Internet users posted images of the Google Trends announcement on advertising spaces in roundabouts and underground stations.

As for Google, the company didn’t mention “revenge porn” in its summary of trending topics in the United Kingdom. However, a few weeks ago, the tech giant announced its plan to remove “revenge porn” from future Internet searches. The company explained that it was going to issue online forms through which members of the public can request that revenge porn content involving them no longer shows up in Google searches. Just like in the case with “right-to-be-forgotten” searches, links to revenge porn images will be excluded from Google search results on that person, though they will remain online.

Google claimed that revenge porn images are very personal and emotionally damaging, and they only degrade the victims, who are predominantly women. The statistics show that interest in the search term “revenge porn” has grown rapidly and peaked in 2015.

Google has broken down interest in the search term regionally as well, with the United Kingdom at the top, followed by the United States and the Philippines at the bottom of the chart. Revenge porn searches include “ex revenge porn” or “girlfriend revenge”.

Late in 2014, the company made history and became the first corporation to rent the world’s largest and most expensive digital billboard in Times Square, New York. The billboard, eight storeys high, cost about $2.5m to hire for a month. 300,000 pedestrians pass by the billboard every day.