Google Zeitgeist for India – 2009

Google has released the latest Zeitgeist for 2009. While the overall results shown are predictable (basis the different headers)… there are some things which were interesting.

Let’s have a quick recap of important happenings in India over the past one year –
- General Elections (by far the biggest event)
- Indians win at Oscar
- The Budget presentation (during the time of recession)
- Interest in the Economy (the ripple effect of the global economic scenario)
- And of course: the staple diet of most Indians – movies, cricket, celebrities



Google search queries correlate to the above happenings with Budget 2009, Election Results, Slumdog Millionaire etc., all being the top search queries of the year. However, some interesting search queries too were to be seen. ‘Bhuvan’ too was seen to be the fastest growing search query. Launched in Mid-August, Bhuvan, the ISRO’s Geo-satellite, which can zoom to 10 square meter (similar to Google, or Wikimaps), would have been of interest to many. I have not tried this yet… but I’m sure, looking at the popularity of its search, there would be at-least hundred thousand installations on desktops across the country.

Search for Michael Jackson has been a global phenomenon. In fact, Google had initially presumed, looking at the surge of searches happening on MJ on its website that it was some sort of malicious virus attack.

An interest on Twitter in India could be attributed to 2 personalities and the media coverage they had given to Twitter – Barack Obama, and Sashi Taroor. I have sure the number of people who have joined the twitter bandwagon after this from India would have been multifold. Interesting to note that Sashi Taroor has close to 470K followers!

The most interesting piece was the “how to” category. Going through the queries, it is safe to assume that most of the ‘How to’ queries comes from the younger audience – How to –kiss, date, flirt… etc would be the teeny-weeny people’s eternal quest and Google (therefore the Internet) is their guide, companion, and philosopher. How to – Meditate, concentrate, study….all would have been from students before exams searching for the panacea for improving their examination performance.. The other set of How to – Chat, download… shows that people are searching for the basic Internet usage…which means that more and more new users are getting online.

Overall, the Google Zeitgeist 2009 for India has very much reflected what is happening around us. While most Indians (internet using) are interested in movies and celebrities, it is heartening to know that these users are also keen to expand their horizons beyond movies & celebrities.

While I wait for the next year Google Zeitgeist, I am also eager to know what you think of this year’s.

Cheers

Santosh

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