MOST RESEARCHED BOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY ON GOOGLE

Indian netizens continued to swoon over Aishwarya Rai making her the most searched for Bollywood celebrity on search engine Google in 2007, even as newcomer Deepika Padukone — who made her Bollywood debut with Om Shanti Om in November — earned a spot in the top 10 list in the category.

According to the first-ever annual ‘Google Zeitgeist’ report for India (indicating the fastest rising and highest volume search terms submitted to Google in the country), the poster girl of Indian tennis Sania Mirza, was the top Sportstar on Google search, and Mahatma Gandhi the ‘most searched for political leader’.

In a reflection of the rising popularity of social networking service amongst Indian online audiences, Orkut emerged at the top of another category titled the “fast-rising search queries”, followed by YouTube and Gmail, respectively. Other terms such as Map, Google, Indian Railways, Yahoo Mail, Technology, Yahoo and Zapak completed the list of top 10 ‘fast rising search queries in 2007’.

“Social networking tops the list, followed closely by other platforms of online communication and interaction,” Google said.

Methodology

Explaining the methodology of hot searches, Google said its ‘Google Zeitgeist’ was calculated by looking at the aggregation of the most popular and fast-rising search queries submitted to Google by Indian users.

“In compiling the 2007 year-end Google Zeitgeist, we studied the aggregation of billions of search queries people from India conducted on Google. To come up with this list, we looked at several thousand of 2007’s most popular searches, and ranked them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2006.

“For example, Deepika Padukone’s popularity online soared in 2007. We also gave a proportionately higher score to searches with more traffic increase. Separately, we also computed the most popular queries in 2007 by volume,” Google said.

Amongst the Bollywood celebrities, the pecking order saw Salman Khan take the second slot after Aishwarya Rai, followed by Hrithik Roshan, Katrina Kaif, Shahrukh Khan, Mallika Sherawat, Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor, and Rani Mukherjee.

While Sania Mirza led the list of top 10 sportstars, other most-searched for Sports personalities were Maria Sharapova, Sachin Tendulkar, John Cena, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Rahul Dravid, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sourav Ganguly, and Anna Kournikova.

Top 10 Bollywood Celebrities

01. Aishwariya Rai
02. Salman Khan
03. Hrithik Roshan
04. Katrina Kaif
05. Shahrukh Khan
06. Mallika Sherawat
07. Priyanka Chopra
08. Kareena Kapoor
09. Rani Mukherjee
10. Deepika Padukone
Top 10 Movies

01. Spiderman
02. Sivaji
03. Dhoom 2
04. Om Shanti Om
05. Chak De India
06. Saawariya
07. Harry Potter
08. Ghost Rider
09. Bhool Bhulaiya
10. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Top 10 Places of Interest

01. Kerala
02. Singapore
03. Goa
04. Australia
05. London
06. Dubai
07. Rajasthan
08. Jaipur
09. Kashmir
10. Ooty
Top 10 political leaders

01. Mahatma Gandhi
02. Abdul Kalam
03. Sonia Gandhi
04. Indira Gandhi
05. Rabindranath Tagore
06. Pratibha Patil
07. Subhash Chandra Bose
08. Rahul Gandhi
09. Sarojini Naidu
10. Mayawati
Top 10 Sportstars

01. Sania Mirza
02. Maria Sharapova
03. Sachin Tendulkar
04. John Cena
05. David Beckham
06. Cristiano Ronaldo
07. Rahul Dravid
08. Mahendra Singh Dhoni
09. Sourav Ganguly
10. Anna Kournikova