Katrina is Google's most searched Bollywood name

Indian search terms in 2008 are a pointer to popular taste

No one can be sure how many of India's In­ternet users — estimated to number 50 million — keyed in a query at the world's largest search engine, Google. If global trends are a guide, an overwhelming percentage; but what they looked for in their 'cyber khoj' (search) during these last 12 months is an interesting - and revealing - barometer of public taste, preoccupation and concern.

The leading search engine last week unveiled statistics of the most popular key words that originated from its India-based users.

Google's own social net­working site, Orkut; e-mail service, Gmail; and video por­tal, YouTube, are, not surpris­ingly, among the top searched terms — presumably users too lazy to go directly to these sites. Interestingly, people did a Google search to quickly reach rival offerings Yahoo and Yahoo Mail.

When it comes to subject categories, the top Bollywood searches reveal the snowball­ing popularity of actress Ka­trina Kaif, by far the most-searched name this year. Google engineers told The Hindu that Katrina has a huge following in Pakistan as well, which outnumbers Indi­an searches. The actress has pushed long-time favourite Aishwarya Rai to the second place - maybe the price one pays in the public's fickle fancy for getting married!

Among sports personali­ties, Sania Mirza rules - out­numbering cricket stars Sachin Tendulkar and M.S. Dhoni. Rahul Dravid and Sou-rav Ganguly do not make the top ten this year.

Hindi cinema has always swept the top film title searches, and 2008 is no ex­ception with Jodha Akbar in lead position and another eight titles in the top ten. A surprise southern entrant at no. 2 is the Tamil film and Kamal Hassan's opus, Dasavatharam.

Goa and Kerala head the list of holiday destinations searched - which shows that Indian preferences mirrored the international popularity of these two States. When it comes to politicians, Mahat-ma Gandhi is a perennial number one - outdistancing popular interest in contem­porary names like Raj Thack­eray and Barack Obama. Three generations of Gandhis - Indira, Sonia and Rahul -find a place in the top ten in politics for 2008.

And in an era of affordable budget flying, good old Indian Railways holds it own: The Indian rail site was tlfl most popular government website, beating hardy annuals like CBSE results and Income Tax.

Did all these seekers of in­formation find what they were looking for? That is a separate story!