Zeitgeist: Tracking the Indian web story

Online giant Google released a report – ‘Zeitgeist’ – on what 81 million Indian netizens have been searching for on the web. The company analyses billions of search queries to come up with the annual report.

Indian Railways continues to top the chart. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) emerged as the most searched for year-on-year, followed by low-cost smartphone maker Micromax Mobiles and YouTube movies.

Facebook was the second most popular site, after songs, confirming the latest trend of hooking on to social networking. In 2009, Facebook was the ninth most popular searched item on the web.

Indian netizens were not far behind the global trend with the FIFA World Cup that grabbed the real world attention.

Among the most popular on the web, Songs, Facebook and Google remained on the top. The most searched celebrity list continued to be from the Bollywood. Indians searched for British actress Aruna Shields and new sensation, Sonakshi Sinha. Other favourites from Bollywood were Zarine Khan and Katrina Kaif. Among the men, Salman Khan ruled the web.

The telecom sector ruled the list of brand searches. With a mobile subscription base of over 700 million, Nokia and Samsung were the most searched on Google, followed by Airtel, Micromax and Dell. Surprisingly, while car sales are zooming up in India, Maruti was the only auto company that was among the top 10 most popular brands searched.

Action dominated the movie choice of the Indian netizens with Kites, Endhiran and Dabangg being the top three movies. 3 idiots and Harry Potter were also popular.

Though cricket scores appeared to be the sixth most-searched query, former IPL boss Lalit Modi was the most searched individual from the cricketing world. Among the fourth- most searched personality, he was the most sought after online after he was suspended in April.

Globally, Chatroulette, iPad and Justin Bieber were the three fastest-rising search terms in 2010, while Twitter was eighth and Facebook tenth. The surprise among the pack, among the most searched globally, was Chatroulette, a video chat room that matches you randomly with another person anywhere in the world at the click of a button and lets you endlessly jump from one new person to the other.

“So who made the lists this year? Whether you call it soccer, futbol, or anything else, we all rushed to TV screens and keyboards and created a whole new search category: World Cup-related queries. In the US, Paul the Octopus, those incessant vuvuzelas and Ghana’s team all made the top 10 list. 2010 was also a big year for the tech-obsessed, with the iPad capturing the attention of gadget junkies, reaching the top 10 fastest rising list in no fewer than 13 countries as well as the global fastest rising list,” said Johanna Wright, director of product management, search in her blog.

In 2009 Indian netizens had the budget news and the country’s biggest corporate scandal, Satyam, on their search radar — both emerging as the fastest rising queries on Google. Last year, while India mourned the untimely demise of the King of Pop and looked for the latest buzz word Twitter, the Indian railways and Gmail continued to be the most popular online destinations.