Most popular search terms in India for '08

BANGALORE, INDIA: Today, Google announced its India Zeitgeist, a look at 2008 through the collective eyes of the Indian users on the web.

The 2008 year-end India Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted by users in India.

“The year-end provides an opportunity to take stock of our lives and those of others, look at what made news through the year and browsing the Google India Zeitgeist lists is especially interesting as these provide a refreshing perspective on the year gone by and an insight into emerging trends. Different people find different things to do on the web, so these lists are a good representation of the unique ways in which Indian users mine the Internet. Given the popularity of mobiles, this year we also looked at what people searched for while on the move through their mobile phones,” said Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India.

While developing the 2008 report, Google analyzed various aspects of the search queries to understand what was on the minds of Internet users in India.

Most popular search terms in India for 2008:

* YouTube becomes the fastest rising search term in 2008

* Orkut and Gmail remain the most popular networking and communication properties for Indian users

* Katrina Kaif is the most searched person in India

* Cricket, always a favourite has become even more popular this year

* Indians are beating long queues at the Railway station by going online

"We retrieved the most frequently-searched terms for the period across many categories like Bollywood Celebrities, Holiday destinations etc. In addition we also looked at the top 10 fastest rising search words in India. This was done by reviewing several thousands of 2008's most popular searches and ranking them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2007. Taken together, we believe that all these lists define the true Zeitgeist or the "spirit of the times." In addition, for the first time this year we are offering a unique insight into the mobile web, by including the top queries searched for on the mobile," added Goel.

Zeitgeist

Google reveals the internet "Zeitgeist" (German for "the spirit of the times") through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive every year. In addition to the year-end Zeitgeist, which highlights the top trends of 2008, we also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends.