Bangaloreans spend highest amount of time online

E-commerce has emerged as the fastest rising category in Karnataka

The latest search trends announced by Google India indicated increasing preference towards utilitarian services and the visual web in the country, the users in Karnataka showed their passion towards shopping online. E-commerce has emerged as the fastest rising category, when compared to the searches in Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.

Google India on Tuesday announced its annual Zeitgeist, a look at 2012 through the users’ eyes, offering a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted in India.

This year’s trending searches show a growing interest by the residents of Karnataka in the e-commerce landscape. Bangalore-headquartered company ‘Flipkart’, ‘online shopping’ and ‘online recharge’ featured as the top three fastest rising keywords, in this southern Indian state.

However, what is interesting to note is that, as per Google Trends, ‘online shopping’ was the most searched keyword in six states – including Tripura, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Pondicherry, and Orissa – that have fewer offline retail outlets in relation to the more metropolitan states.

From a state perspective, Bhubhaneswar and Vizag raced ahead of Bangalore to search for online shopping and related terms – ‘online shopping India’, ‘online mobile shopping’, and ‘shoe online shopping’.

A recent Google Trends search for 2012 also showed that that Bangalore spends the highest amount of time online, searching for the best smartphones and tablets available in the Indian market.

Google reveals the Internet "Zeitgeist" (German for "the spirit of the times") through an exploration of the over one trillion search queries received each year.