According to Google Trends, the most searched topic in India in 2022 was the Indian Premier League (IPL). This was also the most searched term in 2021 and 2020 in India. Globally, the IPL was the 10th most searched term this year. In fact, globally, four of the top 10 searched topics involved cricket. Three of these were bilateral series involving India — India versus England, India versus South Africa and India versus West Indies.
This is not surprising given India’s population advantage. The only other country with a comparable population — China — was out of the equation as Google is blocked in that country. Trends are measured at the country level, as places with the most search volume would always rank highest otherwise. Still, as global trends consider all Google users, data from India are bound to skew the data, as is evident from the results. For instance, in the U.S., neither the IPL nor any other cricket-related news featured in the top 10; Wordle was the most searched term in 2022. Incidentally, Wordle was the most searched item globally this year, given the huge interest it garnered in India too.
Along with the IPL, other sporting events such as the Asia Cup, the FIFA World Cup, the ICC T20 World Cup, the Commonwealth Games, and the Indian Super League (ISL) were also part of the top 10 searched items in India. These sport-related searches were confined to the days when the event was on. The IPL and the ISL had longer shelf lives compared to other sport events, given their relatively longer schedules.
The films Brahmastra: Part One — Shiva and K.G.F: Chapter 2 — were the other two terms most searched in India. The other movies which were not part of the top 10 overall searches but featured in the top 10 movie-related searches were The Kashmir Files, RRR, Kantara, Pushpa: The Rise, Vikram, Laal Singh Chaddha, Drishyam 2 and Thor: Love and Thunder.
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Chart 1 shows the most searched terms by Indians in 2022. The darker the shade, the higher the popularity of the topic/trend at that time. The darkest shade represents the peak popularity of a search term this year. The lightest shade corresponds to nearly no searches for that term on a date. The topics are arranged chronologically based on their peak popularity, and the number indicates the overall popularity rank.
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Nupur Sharma, a former national spokesperson of the BJP; Droupadi Murmu, President; and Rishi Sunak, the U.K. Prime Minister were the most searched personalities. Lalit Modi and Sushmita Sen were also part of the list.
‘What is Agneepath Scheme’, ‘what is NATO’ and ‘what is NFT’ were the top searches under the ‘what is’ category. ‘How to download vaccination certificate’ and ‘how to download Professional Tax Enrolment Certificates’ were the top searches under the ‘how to’ category. Paneer pasanda, modak and chicken soup were the most searched recipes this year. ‘Covid vaccines near me’, ‘swimming pool near me’, and ‘water park near me’ were top searches under the ‘near me’ category. Table 2 lists the 10 most searched topics under a category in India in 2022.
Source: Google Trends
Also read: Google for India 2022 round up: Sundar Pichai on data protection, AI, grants, and more
