Bharat ki Khoj: Top Google Searches of 2011
December 16, 2011
Why is it that we Indians search the web? Whether it is to find a job, follow the world of politics, Bollywood or cricket, stock updates or to send flowers to a friend, listen to music or just to hang out .... we come to Google with something on our mind.
As the year comes to an end, we look back at the searches in 2011 to compose the year’s Zeitgeist—the spirit of the time. With Zeitgeist, we look at the most popular and the fastest rising terms—the terms with the highest growth in 2011—in many categories across India to give you a glimpse into the hottest trends and topics. From searching for information on local politics, the Lokpal Bill and Aadhar cards, to following news on the Japan earthquake and Osama Bin Laden’s death, people turned to Google to learn more about what was happening in India and around the world.
In 2011, Bharat started coming online. It has been a coming-of-age year for the Indian internet, with young Indians following anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and making him the fastest rising people query of 2011. IBPS (Institute of Banking Personnel Selection) made a surprise appearance as one of the fastest rising searches, showing Indians’ interest in government jobs. Indian Railways continued to be a popular search term, with Indians getting online to book tickets and searching for train timings and other railway-related information.
On a lighter note, Poonam Pandey created a frenzy on the web with a promise she could not fulfill. Katrina Kaif continued her reign in Bollywood as the most searched celebrity in India for the fourth year in a row. 2011 also saw the Khans ruling the web with their movies Bodyguard and Ra One in the top two positions, while movies from contemporaries Aamir Khan (Delhi Belly) and Ajay Devgan (Singham) also made a mark in the top searched movies list.
In a country where cricket is a religion, it comes as no surprise to see the Indian net buzzing with excitement with the historic World Cup win, IPL and Sachin Tendulkar’s campaign for that elusive century of centuries.
While social networking sites featured on the ‘Top Searches’ list, we also saw a sudden spurt in the use of the free SMS website way2SMS, a new entry in this year’s list.
And my personal favorite is the only tech personality to make it to the top 10.. Steve Jobs, who was one of the pillars of computing and internet age and will be missed by India’s netizens.
Beginning today, you can head over to our Year-End Google Zeitgeist website (http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/#en/) to see the top global searches of 2011, and additional top searches in more than forty countries.
We created these lists and graphs using a combination of several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends on an aggregated level. Google Insights for Search, a publicly available tool that displays relative search volume across geographies, time periods and queries, informed many lists and graphs found on this year's Year-End Zeitgeist page.
With billions of searches conducted globally on Google each year, there are a plethora of search trends based on location, season and vertical, and our Year-End Zeitgeist cannot possibly capture them all. If you want to come up with your own lists or graphs, we encourage you to play around with our public Google Insights for Search tool to generate your own "Zeitgeist" lists for 2011.
Thanks to everyone out there for searching on Google -- and here's to more searching in 2012!
As the year comes to an end, we look back at the searches in 2011 to compose the year’s Zeitgeist—the spirit of the time. With Zeitgeist, we look at the most popular and the fastest rising terms—the terms with the highest growth in 2011—in many categories across India to give you a glimpse into the hottest trends and topics. From searching for information on local politics, the Lokpal Bill and Aadhar cards, to following news on the Japan earthquake and Osama Bin Laden’s death, people turned to Google to learn more about what was happening in India and around the world.
In 2011, Bharat started coming online. It has been a coming-of-age year for the Indian internet, with young Indians following anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and making him the fastest rising people query of 2011. IBPS (Institute of Banking Personnel Selection) made a surprise appearance as one of the fastest rising searches, showing Indians’ interest in government jobs. Indian Railways continued to be a popular search term, with Indians getting online to book tickets and searching for train timings and other railway-related information.
On a lighter note, Poonam Pandey created a frenzy on the web with a promise she could not fulfill. Katrina Kaif continued her reign in Bollywood as the most searched celebrity in India for the fourth year in a row. 2011 also saw the Khans ruling the web with their movies Bodyguard and Ra One in the top two positions, while movies from contemporaries Aamir Khan (Delhi Belly) and Ajay Devgan (Singham) also made a mark in the top searched movies list.
In a country where cricket is a religion, it comes as no surprise to see the Indian net buzzing with excitement with the historic World Cup win, IPL and Sachin Tendulkar’s campaign for that elusive century of centuries.
While social networking sites featured on the ‘Top Searches’ list, we also saw a sudden spurt in the use of the free SMS website way2SMS, a new entry in this year’s list.
And my personal favorite is the only tech personality to make it to the top 10.. Steve Jobs, who was one of the pillars of computing and internet age and will be missed by India’s netizens.
| Fastest rising searches | Fastest rising people | Top Searches |
IBPS Google+ World Cup 2011 Bodyguard Ra.one Anna Hazare IPL 2011 Poonam Pandey Ready | Anna Hazare Poonam Pandey Steve Jobs Anushka Sharma Salman Khan Justin Bieber Kajal Agarwal Katrina Kaif Vijay Mallya Aishwarya Rai | YouTube Gmail Yahoomail Yahoo IRCTC Rediffmail Indian Railways way2sms |
| Top Searched People | Top Searched Movies | Top Searched events/news |
| Katrina Kaif Anna Hazare Salman Khan Poonam Pandey Justin Bieber Aishwarya Rai Sachin Tendulkar Kareena Kapoor Steve Jobs Priyanka Chopra | Bodyguard Ra One Harry Potter Delhi Belly Singham Ready Mankatha Transformers 3 Dookudu Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara | IPL World Cup 2011 CBSE result 2011 Diwali Lokpal bill Japan earthquake Aadhar card Osama Bin Laden Pakistan F1 |
Beginning today, you can head over to our Year-End Google Zeitgeist website (http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/#en/) to see the top global searches of 2011, and additional top searches in more than forty countries.
We created these lists and graphs using a combination of several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends on an aggregated level. Google Insights for Search, a publicly available tool that displays relative search volume across geographies, time periods and queries, informed many lists and graphs found on this year's Year-End Zeitgeist page.
With billions of searches conducted globally on Google each year, there are a plethora of search trends based on location, season and vertical, and our Year-End Zeitgeist cannot possibly capture them all. If you want to come up with your own lists or graphs, we encourage you to play around with our public Google Insights for Search tool to generate your own "Zeitgeist" lists for 2011.
Thanks to everyone out there for searching on Google -- and here's to more searching in 2012!
