Top 150 Google searches in India - 2020

India has seen an upsurge in internet usage in the last few years, driven by mobile internet users. With the lowest data rates in the world (1 GB for ~$0.25), Indians are using the internet like never before, and of course they are using Google for their searches.

India has over 1.3 Billion people. With an estimated 50% internet penetration, the number of internet users in India is more than the population of US, UK and Canada, put together!

So, what do 650 million people from India search for on Google? Is it markedly different from the rest of the world? Or is it similar to global trends?

We decided to dive in and answer these questions. And here are the results.

Note: The ones in asterisks (******) are #nsfw, so we wont be showing those keywords here.

The top results match global trends (in this excellent post at the Ahrefs blog), with brand searches dominating the list. However, in addition to the global super-brands like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and Whats App, we see Indian brands and government sites dominating the list.

Key observations from the analysis of the 150 Google search terms for India

So, what else can these top Google search terms tell us about India? Let's take a look.

1. Swiggy has more searches (~2.3 mn) than any other food delivery services
2. Government jobs are in great demand. 'sarkariresult' and related keywords have over 20 mn searches
3. The top Indian travel website (makemytrip.com) is at #59 with ~3.7 mn searches, whereas the top Indian entertainment website Hotstar is at #10
4. Most Indians travel by train (no surprises there) due to the country's vast and accessible train network
5. Unlike US or the World searches, where "weather" ranks in top searches, Indians don't rely as much on Google for checking if they should be carrying an umbrella. Compared to the US where 'weather' is #6 with ~43 mn searches, Indians only googled 'weather' ~2.9 mn times and comes in at #92
6. No matter where you are, internet speed has a similar ranking in our mind. In US, India and the World, the search term 'speedtest' is in the top 50 searches, with India being the highest at #34
7. When it comes to cricket, more than 23 mn searches put 'cricbuzz' as the leader, followed by 'cricinfo' at ~3.9 mn searches
8. Most people are in a hurry to visit google.com. Around ~4.5 mn searches for the letter 'g' is a testament to that. Thankfully Google knows what you are looking for :). (psst.. the address bar can be used for Google search on most browsers)

How we got these numbers

We used  Google Analytics and Ahrefs to get this information. The rest is just excel. The inspiration for this was the blog post from Ahrefs for top searches in the US and the World. We thought it would be interesting to view the searches from an Indian perspective and see what we can find.

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