Priya Prakash Varrier is India’s ‘most searched’ personality

Sport-related queries dethroned entertainment as India’s top ‘googling’ obsession in 2018, occupying the top three spots on the list of most searched for ‘items’ online. This is as per the annual trends data released by Google, which it does towards the end of every year.

The top three trending queries of the year in India were ‘FIFA World Cup 2018’, Live Score’ and ‘IPL 2018’.

Football tops cricket

Apart from being the top query overall, ‘FIFA World Cup 2018’ was the most searched in sports and news categories, with football toppling cricket and Bollywood, which have traditionally been the top two themes of Indian curiosity.

Interestingly, the Supreme Court’s judgment decriminalising homosexuality probably led to a huge spike in ‘What is Section 377’ searches, making it the top ‘What is…’ search.

Tamil and Malayalam film industries walked away with the top searches in the ‘trending movies’ and ‘personalities’ categories respectively. Rajinikanth’s recently released film 2.0 was the most Googled film, while the Malayalam actor Priya Prakash Varrier, who broke the Internet with a wink, was the most searched personality.

The recently married celebrity couple, Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, featured in the top five trending personalities, along with singer Sapna Choudhary and entrepreneur Anand Ahuja, who tied the knot with Sonam Kapoor earlier this year.

The year of high-profile weddings was reflected in people’s search histories as well. ‘Priyanka Chopra Nick Jonas Wedding,’ ‘Deepika Padukone wedding’ and ‘Sonam Kapoor marriage’ were in the top 10 trending news of 2018, along with the Karnataka election results, Nipah virus, Statue of Unity, Bitcoin price, Budget 2018, and Section 377.

A new feature on WhatsApp also seems to have left many confused, with ‘How to send stickers on WhatsApp’ emerging as the most searched ‘How to…’ query, followed by ‘How to link Aadhaar with mobile number’ and ‘How to make rangoli.’