Google India has reported that finance-related search trends have been changing for the country. The report highlights that there has been a 43 percent increase in Indians searching for finance related terms on Google every year. The findings were put together by Google search trend reports as well as independent research conducted by TNS Australia. The report also mentioned that Indians have started using mobile phones to search for financial information a lot as compared to previous years, with phone-based queries growing three times faster than PC based queries.
Certain big banks were also the target of finance-related searches, with HDFC band, ICICI Direct, State Bank of India and the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) being the most popular in 2011-2012. Insurance providers Bajaj Allianz and ICICI prudential also featured in the list after LIC.
According to the Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB), India has 20 million users who access the internet via their hand held devices and 50 million access the net on both hand-held devices as well as desktops and laptops. The total number of internet users in India is over 137 million according to the IMRB.
It has been learnt that banking queries have been growing at 85 percent y-o-y, while investment queries have grown 105 percent. Insurance as well as loan related queries have grown tremendously as well, according to Google.
