Sports never goes out of fashion in India. India’s Year in Search 2022 report by Google says India’s passion for sport reached new heights this year in Search. The Indian Premier League(IPL) topped the list of trending searches in India, while queries for the T20 World Cup and Asia Cup also reached an all-time high.
In 2021 too, sports was one of the most searched topics on the platform with the IPL and ICC T-20 World Cup taking the two top spots in the overall list of queries.
India also dominated sports trends worldwide, securing all top 5 slots in the global trending matches list. Football saw similar excitement, with searches for the ongoing FIFA World Cup peaking this year and making it to the trending searches of the year, along with the Indian Super League.
Interestingly, women’s sports moments also found a place in the top search trends. Indian women’s lawn bowls team that emerged as one of the top queries around this moment after their historic win at the Commonwealth Games. That apart, the Women’s Cricket World Cup marked its debut on the top trending searches for sporting events.
Kabaddi and Tennis rounded up the trending sports events list with Pro Kabaddi League, Australian Open, and Wimbledon.
The search trends also saw a clear shift of people’s interest between 2021 and 2022. Moving on from just vaccines and vaccination centres people actively searched for “Swimming pool near me”, “Water park near me”, “Malls near me” in India.
Theatrical release of films pushed people to look up content around it online. Brahmastra and KGF 2 secured top spots in overall trending searches and trending movie searches; the films also made it to the top global trending movie searches.
Trending movies in India included The Kashmir Files, Laal Singh Chaddha, Drishyam 2, RRR, Pushpa: The Rise, Vikram, Kantara. Thor: Love and Thunder. Was the only English movie that made it to the list.
Two year back, Google launched a hum to search feature wherein one can hum, whistle or sing a melody to look up a song. Chaand Baaliyan and Srivalli made it to the top songs people hummed to search globally.
Moving on sports and entertainment, government schemes such as the e-SHRAM card and Agneepath scheme made it to the list of trending searches. The popular ‘what is’ queries on Search covered a host of topics like NATO, PFI, Article 370, NFT,metaverse and myositis among other things.
The ‘How to’ trending queries continued to be led by topics such as vaccinations, government documents, income tax filing, pregnancy, and others.
Coming to people searches, Nupur Sharma, Droupadi Murmu, Rishi Sunak, e Sushmita Sen, Abdu Rozik, Amber Heard, and sports star Pravin Tambe were some of the most searched.