Unlike last year’s Zeitgeist, entertainment topics had a significant influence on Google’s list of most searched terms for the year.
Shahrukh Khan starrer Bollywood movie ‘Chennai Express‘ was the most searched term on Google India in 2013 while other Bollywood movies like Aashiqui 2 (third place), Krrish 3 (sixth place) and Ram Leela (tenth place) made it to the list.
Colors’ controversial television show Bigg Boss 7 secured the seventh position while celebrities like the American actor Paul Walker who recently died in a car accident was at the eight position and the Bollywood actress Jiah Khan who committed suicide earlier this year was at the ninth position.
Others in the list include the cricket tournament ‘IPL 2013’ at second place, UIDAI which manages the ambitious Aadhaar project (fourth place) and ‘GATE 2014’ competitive exams (fifth place).
Unlike the desktop search terms, the mobile search terms were more utilitarian in nature with ‘restaurants’ topping the charts followed by ‘bars’, and ‘movies’. Others in the list include coffee, cricket score, fast food, wallpaper, news, PNR status and weather (in that order).
Messaging app WhatsApp which recently claimed to have clocked 30 million monthly active users in India was the most searched app on a mobile phone in the country, while its competitors Microsoft’s Skype was ranked fifth and Tencent’s messaging app ‘WeChat’ which has made a significant marketing push in the country during the past year, secured the seventh spot.
Mobile browser ‘UC Browser’ took the second spot while its competitor ‘Opera Mini’ took the third spot. Others in the list include Google Maps (fourth place), Dictionary (sixth place), MX Player (eight place), Google Earth (ninth place) and the quirky Talking Tom app (tenth place).
Temple Run was the most searched mobile game for the year, followed by Stick Cricket and Chhota Bheem. Others in the list include Dress up games, Angry Birds, Sudoku, Spiderman, Pool Games, Chess and Pacman.
Satta Matka was the most searched online game for the year, followed by Ben10, Doraemon, Tom and Jerry, Barbie game, Stick Cricket, Club Penguin, Chhota Bheem, Rummy Circle and Fantasy Premier League.
The list of top searched celebrities for the year is completely dominated by Bollywood with nine of the top ten celebrity searches being Bollywood personalities and the sole exceptions being the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar who was ranked ninth.
Canadian actress Sunny Leone who made her Bollywood debut last year retained her top spot followed by the actor Salman Khan and actress Katrina Kaif. Others Bollywood celebrity in the list include Deepika Padukone, Shahrukh Khan, Honey Singh, Kajal Agarwal, Kareena Kapoor and Poonam Pandey (in that order).
Top Bollywood Actor: Salman Khan was the most searched actor in 2013, followed by Shahrukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor. Others include Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan and Varun Dhawan.
Top Bollywood Actress: Katrina Kaif was the most searched actress in 2013, followed by Deepika Padukone and Kareena Kapoor. Others include Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai, Anushka Sharma, Shraddha Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, and Vidya Balan. Strangely, Sunny Leone who topped the most searched celebrities chart is not present in the list of most searched Bollywood actresses.
While cricketers continues have the highest representation in the list of most searched sports persons, its quite apparent that other sports celebrities are also gaining popularity in the country and accounted for five of the top sports person searches in 2013.
Sachin Tendulkar topped the charts with other cricketers who made it to the list include the Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni (third place), recently retired Rahul Dravid (seventh place), West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle (eight place) and Ravindra Jadeja (ninth place).
Among non-cricketers, former Athlete Milkha Singh was the highest ranked sports person securing the second spot. This was probably driven by the popularity of the Milka Singh biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag which released in July 2013. Others include footballer Lionel Messi (fourth place), tennis players Roger Federer (fifth place), Sania Mirza (sixth place) and badminton player Saina Nehwal (tenth place).
Narendra Modi being named as the prime ministerial candidate for Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was the most searched news item for the year, followed by BlackBerry’s sale plans and Cricketer Rahul Dravid’s retirement.
Other newsworthy events in the Zeitgeist list include Saina Nehwal, Vijay Mallya whose Kingfisher Airlines lost its licenses earlier this year, Karnataka election results, the Aarushi Talwar case, Air India news, Indian Economy 2013 and Uttar Pradesh’s laptop distribution scheme.
Others in the list are online fashion store Myntra, eBay which has started cross promoting products with Snapdeal, Amazon which launched its India marketplace in June 2013, Yepme, Yebhi, Naaptol and FashionAndYou.
IRCTC was expectedly the top searched travel website in the country, followed by redBus which was acquired by MIH India in June 2013 and NASDAQ-listed MakeMyTrip.com.
Others in the list are Yatra, Cleartrip, Goibibo.com, Andhra Government’s APSRTC, Karnataka Government’s KSRTC, SRTC (which we believe is a misspelling while searching for state road corporations) and Expedia.
Samsung is the most searched mobile brand in the country, followed by Nokia and Micromax. Others are Sony, Apple, HTC, Google Nexus, BlackBerry, Karbonn and Lava.
BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was the most searched politician in the country, followed by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Others are Manmohan Singh, Jayalalitha, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Digvijaya Singh and Sushma Swaraj (in that order).
IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) was the most searched university in the country, followed by Annamalai University and University of Rajasthan. Others are JNTU (Hyderabad), Gujarat Technical University, Delhi University, Visvesvaraya TU (Karnataka), M D University (Rohtak), Mumbai University and CCS university.
Macau was the most searched travel destination in the country, followed by Maldives and Mauritius. Others include Bali, Boston, Dubai, Amsterdam, Singapore, Bangkok and Philippines.
Top Airlines: Indigo airlines topped the charts of most searched airlines in the country, followed by Air India and SpiceJet. Other airlines in the list are Jet Airways, Emirates, Air Asia, Go Air, Tiger Airways, Lufthansa and United Airlines.
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