BENGALURU: Searching online for details about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump or even non-onion recipes is now passé. What has now caught the attention of many is air pollution and the number of searches on the search engine Google has crossed over four lakhs in just 13 months.
Indians have looked up air pollution levels in their cities, what it does to them and how can it be prevented. Indoor and outdoor air pollution seems to have become a matter of concern for all and has become the topic of discussion in many circles.
This was revealed in a study conducted by SEMrush, an online visibility platform. The study said that since air pollution has worsened over the years, the searches increased, more so after Delhi’s alarming pollution levels made headlines across India. On average, two lakh people searched the keyword ‘air pollution’ every month.
SEMrush assessed the search data from October 2018 to November 2019. Some of the most searched questions on Google were: “What is air pollution?”, “What are the causes of air pollution?”, and “How to control air pollution?”
‘Air pollution was hot on Twitter too’
The study also tracked the total number of air pollution-related searches and the rate of such searches at different intervals. There was a drastic increase in the number of such searches from 73% in September-October to 968% in September- November. The searches for ‘air quality index’ saw an upsurge from 647% to 5,647% during the same period.
The study also found that the issue of air pollution was hot on Twitter too. From August to November 2019, there were 7,817 tweets. It was also found that that most of the tweets on the topic were negative, accounting for 54%, whereas only 21% tweets were positive and 24% were neutral.
Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications, SEMrush, said, “Air pollution was indeed a hazardous issue which should be a major concern world over. Unfortunately, India has been struggling to tackle it for long now. This case study shows how Indians are concerned about the deteriorating air quality in the country and how they can control it. The drastic increase in keyword searches also determine that Indians are proactively responding to the worsening problem of air pollution.”