PhishPin / Brands Live Phishing Data / Tech, email & cloud / Google

Key findings for Google

• Impersonation pressure is High (69/100): Google has more reported hosts than 91% of the 579 brands we track.
• That is 1.9× the average for tech, email & cloud (144 hosts per brand).
• 0% of the hosts (1) are listed by two or more independent feeds, so most of this is not single-source noise.
• 170 hosts (61%) hide the Google name in a subdomain of an unrelated site, the trick that makes a link look official at a glance.
• The most common ending is .com (104 hosts, 38%).
• 27% of hosts pair the brand with a bait word. The most common is “account” (47 hosts).
• 85 lookalike domains were registered in the last 15 days, 21 of them in the three most recent days of data.
• 4 of the new domains are typo or look-alike-character copies, which are the hardest for people to spot.

How attackers fake Google

These breakdowns cover all 277 matching hostnames, not only the rows listed below.

Hosts reported in phishing feeds

The most widely reported hostnames that reference Google, ranked by how many feeds list them and then by reported URLs. Search, filter and export all 100 rows.

New lookalike domains registered recently

Domains registered in the last 15 days that contain Google's name, sit one character away from it or use look-alike characters. Attackers often register these days before sending the first email.

How Google phishing works

Phishing against Google follows patterns common to tech, email & cloud. Typical lures:

• A "password expires today" or "mailbox full" email with a link to a fake sign-in page.
• A shared-document or e-signature request from a compromised contact that leads to a credential-harvesting page.
• A security alert about a login from an unfamiliar country that asks you to "secure your account".
• A billing or renewal notice with a phone number to call for a refund.

Red flags

• The sign-in page is on a domain you do not recognise, even if the logo and layout look perfect.
• A document or voicemail arrives from a colleague you were not expecting to hear from.
• The message pushes you to sign in immediately instead of going to the service yourself.

Real Google domains

If the address in your browser is not one of these (or a subdomain of them), it is not Google. The list is not exhaustive.

If you already clicked or entered details

Change the password from a clean device, sign out all sessions, review mailbox rules and connected apps for anything you did not create, and turn on multi-factor authentication. Tell your IT team, because stolen mailbox logins are often used to attack colleagues next.

Protecting a brand like Google from lookalike domains

If you run security, brand or fraud for a company that is copied this way, this is the order that works in practice:

1. Enforce DMARC. Move your policy to quarantine, then reject, so attackers cannot send mail that passes as your domain.
2. Watch new registrations. Lookalikes appear daily; the earlier you see one, the sooner you can act, ideally before the first email goes out.
3. Register the obvious typos and keyword variants you can afford to hold, and check which lookalikes are already registered by someone else.
4. Report fast. A live fake needs a request to the registrar and host, plus a report to browser safe-browsing lists and the public feeds shown above.
5. Tell your customers where you will and will not ask for logins, codes or payments.

Questions about Google phishing

Other tech, email & cloud being impersonated

All tech, email & cloud brands ranked

Most impersonated brands overall

See all 579 brands