HYDERABAD: Google India on Wednesday announced its ‘Year in Search’ results, recapping the top search trends of 2018 in India.
Google’s Year in Search continues to offer a unique perspective to the most significant moments in news, sports, politics, media and entertainment, and all the questions that have captured the minds of India’s internet users.
This year, sports and entertainment dominated the top trending charts with queries around FIFA World Cup 2018 leading the pack followed by Indian Premier League (IPL).
Interestingly, football swept cricket in the overall search listing, with queries around Football World Cup topping those around the cricketing action during the IPL season.
During Karnataka’s state elections, queries around Karnataka elections soared to mark its presence among the top trending queries, while Big Boss turned out to be the top choice when it came to entertainment this year, surpassing queries related to the Rajinikanth/Akshay blockbuster Robot 2.0.
On the cinema front, the Bollywood blockbusters overshadowed Hollywood in the search lists, with Robot 2.0 taking the top spot, followed by action thriller and Bollywood blockbusters Baaghi 2 and Race 3.
The three Hollywood entries in the list happened to be from Marvel Studios: Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Deadpool 2.
The songs that ruled the roost included Neha Kakkar’s Dilbar Dilbar, Arijit Singh’s Tera Fitoor and Atif Aslam’s Dekhte Dekhte from Bollywood. Interestingly, the lone English entrant was the ever-popular Latin hit song Despacito, which also happened to make it to the Year in Search list last year!
Among the most searched personalities that took prominence this year, Priya Prakash Varrier topped the list for her ‘wink’ that went viral, followed by none other than Priyanka Chopra’s spouse, Nick Jonas. Priyanka Chopra, came in at fourth place, with Sapna Choudhary figuring in the top three. The interest in royal weddings spiked as American actor turned Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle figured in the list.
Among the most interesting search terms were those centered around ‘How to..’, and ‘What is…’, which saw a wide variety of questions spanning from ‘What is the kiki challenge’, to ‘How to solve a Rubik’s cube’.
The list of ‘Near me…’ queries revolved around mobile stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and cash points, with jobs near me also figuring in the list.