Google received 4,287 requests for user information from the US government during the first six months of 2010. During the same period, the company also received 1,000 such requests from the UK government.

The figures were released in the company's latest Transparency Report, which aims to show levels of censorship around the world. Civil liberty groups had a positive response to the release of the data, but called on the company to provide even more information about the requests.

Google released data on how often nations request for user data or ask the company to censor information.

From July 2009 to the end of the year, the company received seven court orders to remove content from YouTube in the US.

In an interview with the BBC, Scott Rubin, the company's public policy head, said that the tool contains a graph that shows Google traffic outages around the world, which can be due to anything from governments blocking access to cables being cut.

"Last year after the Iranian elections access to the internet was cut off and we saw a sudden drop in traffic to YouTube," he said.

Civil liberties groups lauded the service as an invaluable tool against government censorship around the globe.

"I think it is a tremendous initiative and it would be helpful if other networks could do the same thing... I think there will be some embarrassing data and it will vary from country to country. The UK is neither the best or the worst," said Lilian Edwards, a board member of the Open Rights Group.

More data about the nature of the requests would be useful, she added.

"It would be interesting to see whether these take-downs refer to libel, surveillance and intercepts or the content industries. The more data we have the more useful it will be," Edwards said.

"It would, for example, be interesting to compare Google's data with published UK surveillance requests."