Telangana: Love, sex and films drove searches online last year

HYDERABAD: Search trend analysis on Google has revealed that people in Telangana looked up for love, sex and gold a lot in the second year of the pandemic. While across the country, people searched ‘sexy’ (in Hindi), netizens in Telangana looked up for ‘sex’ (in Telugu) in 2021, enough to take both words in the list of top Google searches. ‘Love’ also featured in Telangana’s top list.However, pirated websites trumped all of the above searches. People in Telangana searched for film piracy websites for Tollywood releases. Most new Tollywood movies were leaked on these sites, which are popular in other parts of the country too.“Piracy is a criminal offence and causes huge loss to the film industry. Small and medium budget films are the worst hit. Police and agencies concerned must keep it in check,” Tollywood film director N Shankar told TOI.Trends indicate that in Telangana, like the rest of India, there is a large consumption of video content.Another top search in Telangana, rather unsurprisingly, was ‘gold rate today’. While the country searched for ‘satta’ (gambling) to try and make some quick money, netizens in Telangana typed ‘matka’ in the search window a lot.‘CoWin app’ and ‘Covid-19 vaccine’ were also the top queries from Telangana. Many in Telangana and across the country also looked for ‘cricket’.Top searches are terms that are most frequently searched within the chosen region. Social media platforms were also popular searches.