Google India has announced its annual Zeitgeist, a look at 2012 through the collective eyes of our nation on the web. Like every year, this year’s Zeitgeist also offers a perspective on the major events and trends, based on searches conducted in India. Internet users in India have now started using the web for their personal needs – shopping, booking tickets, and making informed decisions for their offline purchases.
Rajan Anandan, VP and Managing Director - Sales and Operations, Google India, said, “Google’s 2012 Zeitgeist reflects data from 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages globally. With 137 million users, India is the world’s third largest internet market and is a good barometer of trends in Indian society as a whole.”
“With growing smartphone adoption, mobile searches continued to grow with over 70 million mobile internet users. We expect India’s next 150–180 million Internet users will access the Internet through their mobile devices. This means that the information that these users will look for will need to be more local and meaningful as already reflected in the kind of search trends we’re seeing in the country,” he added.
Google’s Zeitgeist data shows that utilitarian services drove search volumes. With more institutions moving their services online for greater convenience, searches for them ticked upward accordingly. For instance, banks emerged as one of the most popular categories, with net banking being the most frequently searched query within the category.
