Google’s annual search report 2020: From WFH jobs to online courses, here's what people searched in 2020

As work from home became a new normal amid pandemic, there were a lot of interesting terms that were regularly searched on Google. As per Google's annual ‘Year in Search' report, terms like, “work from home jobs”, “online course”, “how to sell online” and “certificate course” — were among those recording the highest growth in India during 2020.

WFH jobs and e-courses have been the most searched keywords in the country, the report suggested.

“Work from home jobs” saw 140 percent growth in 2020 over 2019 across India, the phrase “online course” saw 85 percent growth. Searches for “certificate course” saw 50 percent on-year growth and “how to sell online” saw over 65 percent increase in searches.

The term “work from home jobs'' witnessed the highest surge in Telangana, followed by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, and Maharashtra. Also, in terms of cities, the internet users in Mira-Bhayandar made the highest number of searches for “work from home jobs”, followed by Secunderabad, Thane, Hyderabad, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Ghaziabad, Bengaluru, Navi Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, and Mysuru.

As per Google, “… demand for connected devices saw a massive surge with ‘second-hand laptops’ recording a more than 60 percent rise in search queries YoY”. “These behaviours were coupled with increasing comfort with transacting online with more than 60 per cent YoY in searches for “how to pay online”, compared to being flat last year,” it said.

Meanwhile, the search for “online course” rose during April, with the maximum interest coming from Thane, Salem, Noida, Kanpur, Gurgaon, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Coimbatore, Ghaziabad, Vadodara, and Navi Mumbai.