Stars fall by the wayside as netizens get serious about shopping

We’re the country’s most wired city. And so it’s understandable that we’re big on gadgets and like it online. Now, Google Zeitgeist, an annual search trends report released by Google India, reveals that Bangalore’s netizens spend the most time online. More specifically, they’re searching and shopping for gadgets.

Online shopping

Google’s release on its trends data states that Bangalore searches most for the “best smartphones and tablets”. Words pertaining to e-commerce or shopping online topped the list of keywords.

The Karnataka-specific trends, though not as detailed as the all-India lists, revealed that compared to the other metros, Bangalore’s netizens most trawled the net for online shopping sites. Even the State as a whole tended towards e-commerce keywords all year round, Google India announced.

More specifically, the top three keywords for the State were: Flipkart (the Bangalore-headquartered e-commerce firm), online shopping and online recharge.

People trawling the web for and looking to shop online, however, is not a trend restricted to Karnataka. Online shopping was the most searched keyword in six other Indian States, namely, Tripura, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Puducherry, and Odisha. Though Google offers little perspective on why this is so, it appears that regions that have less easy access to retail stores or brands are looking to shop online.

More than trivia

The year-end Internet report trawls over a trillion search queries to find the top 12 trends. What’s new with the data this year is that the shift on people and events — mostly film personalities and cricket matches — has now shifted to shopping, booking tickets and researching products online, indicating that netizens in India are now using the web on a day-to-day basis for their personal needs.

Net banking

So, looking for utilitarian services drove search volumes, Google said, adding that banks emerged among popular categories, with net banking being the most frequently searched query within the category. Mindful of privacy landmines, it also clarified that it used “anonymised, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time”.

Third largest market

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, Rajan Anandan, vice-president and managing director, sales and operations, Google India, said in a press release, adding that the trend reflects data from 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages globally.