India's search queries depicts impact of Covid-19 on consumer intent
Google’s latest report on ‘What India’s Searching For?’ tries to uncover the latest insights for brands by showing marketers what’s on the top of mind of consumers.
Consumer time spent on smartphone devices has gone through the roof. According to Nielsen data, the average user spent 4.5 hours per day on their smartphone in Week 3 of Covid-19. Indians are communicating with other members of their community using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services and social media usage has grown by 20% in terms of time spent per user per week.
This has understandably put a burden on their broadband connections with Google reporting 4X growth for search queries such as ‘slow internet’ and ‘broadband connections’.
Users are also turning to the web to look for the ‘best’ and build their brand consideration sets much before the actual purchase. With the closure of major retail stores, search queries for essential services “near me” or providing “delivery” saw an unprecedented boost. 50% of users wanted to know the response of brands to Covid-19 crisis in terms of closing of stores, changing hours etc.
Search queries like ‘grocery delivery near me’, ‘online grocery delivery’, ‘ration dukaan’ saw as much as 550%, 350%, and 300% increase in volume of queries. ‘How things are made’ and ingredient based have been a growing category of interest for Indians over the past several years. Post-Covid-19 there has been a 500% increase in ‘immunity’ based searches as consumers leaned on local language queries for traditional homemade supplies remedies. Recently, search volumes for ‘vitamin C’ grew by 150%.
There has been an accelerated amount of interest in e-learning as searches for ‘learn online’ and ‘teach online’ saw an uptake. The following table reflects the dynamics of the current demand and supply in Edu-tech.
Also, with job security and hiring taking a hit due to the pandemic, users were looking at digital to look for job opportunities to sustain during these tough times. There was a steady rise in search queries for ‘work from home job’ and ‘work from home internships’ which saw 50% and 150% increase.
People are also looking to get fit during the lockdown with search queries for ‘gym at home’ and ‘full body workout at home’ seeing an increase of 93% and 90% respectively. Keyword ‘yoga asanas’ also saw a 70% growth in search volumes.
Overall food recipe related searches have grown by 20% on YouTube. The search intent shows a craving for street food with queries like ‘chhole recipe’, ‘panipuri recipe’ and ‘5-minute recipes’ seeing a 148%, 107%, and 56% respectively. There has been a 270% increase in search queries with ‘easy’ in same category which shows that people are trying out new things.
As consumers rely on digital for everyday activities, they are also looking to navigate their long-term financial goals in this period of economic instability. They are looking at risk mitigating investment plans and specific insurance schemes. Trading on brokerage platforms has seen a massive leap. Searches from non-metros across certain insurance categories grew 2x as fast as metros and local language search also saw a boost. Search query ‘Corona insurance’ saw a whopping 1230% growth.
As physical submission of cash and check payments has been discouraged owing to Covid-19 there has been a surge in search queries regarding online bill payment.
Amongst digital payments, ‘UPI’ had 3x more search interest than ‘IMPS’ and 1.5x more than ‘NEFT’ in 2019. Searches about UPI from non-metros grew faster at 79% compared to metros at 28%
Search for on demand services saw a hike as consumers look to limit face to face interactions and look for alternatives. ‘Free video dating’, ‘consult doctor online’, ‘collaborative softwares’ and ‘online doctor’ queries saw the most growth.
Content consumption has seen a spike across platforms. search interest for overall video streaming platforms saw a massive surge between 40-120% as Indians clocked almost 4 hours/week/person on video-on-demand. Search queries show interest in following genres of content.
Consumers are also searching for music streaming content in local languages. Search intent is skewed towards music videos.
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