Google and Airtel share what Indians searched in 2011
As the year draws to an end, Google and Airtel have shared Internet trends of 2011. Google's annual Zeitgeist list has some some intriguing web searches being made from India. The first thing one would notice going through Google's India Zeitgeist is that Indians search a lot for other websites on Google. 6 out of the 11 top searches for 2011 were other websites:
- YouTube
- Gmail
- Yahoomail (Really, India?)
- Yahoo
- Rediffmail (again, really?)
As it turns out, people also Google for Google. Enough to get "Google" in the top searches for 2011 list. The rest of the searches stemming from India are in line with some highlights of 2011. Protests led by social activist, Anna Hazare made for India's Syria moment. Google's Zeitgeist list Anna Hazare as the second top searched people and top fastest rising searched person. Steve Jobs' untimely death, India's prestigious Unique Identification project, Osama Bin Laden's death, CBSE exam results and IPL 2011 (Cricketing event) were some of the other top searches. Interestingly, Shahrukh Khan's highly publicized movie Ra.One was topped by Salman Khan starrer Bodyguard. (Box Office numbers for the two movies had the same results.)
Airtel's Mobitude 2011 report observed over a 170 Million subscribers for their mobile Internet behavior. Airtel's results are in line with Google's in some cases. Katrina Kaif, a female actor, leads Airtel's top downloaded female celebrity and was Google's most searched people for 2011. According to Airtel, highlights of Mobitude 2011 are:
- 150 Million music tracks were downloaded
- 19 Million movie wallpapers were downloaded
- Google, Gmail and Facebook were the most visited mobile websites
- Popular social networks in order of use were Facebook, Orkut and Twitter
Among phone applications, iSpyCam (allows viewing popular webcams streams) was the most downloaded app followed by Kingfisher Calendar 2011 (featuring swimsuit models) and SecureSMS.