Google India’s recent survey reveals that India is among the top countries when it come to the volume of search queries related to education on Google. In fact, India ranks second, and is just behind the U.S. The study further reveals over 60 percent of the Indian students who have the Internet access use the Google search to research information related to courses and institutes.
IT and vocational courses are most searched topics followed by MBA and engineering colleges. The study further reveals that Indian students spend about five to six months on researching before making their final decision on the institute they want admission in. The survey is comprised of Google search query patterns and an offline research conducted by TNS Australia. Out of 2,229 survey respondents, 52 percent were female and 48 percent male. The respondents belonged to 18-35 years age group. The survey was conducted across seven Indian cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Google’s survey also showed that along with the popularity of smartphones and usage of the Internet on the go among the Indian students, as majority said they wanted the educational institutes to have mobile-friendly websites. About 66 percent of the students said they accessed the online content via their mobile phones. Another interesting finding of the survey is that majority of the students want more videos as part of their research about educational institutes. About 56 percent wanted to have videos on career and placements, while 44 percent looked for videos on faculty.
“With over 60 million Internet-user population in India being in the age group of 18 to 35, educational-related search queries are exploding on Google. Our core objective behind compiling this study was to understand the impact Internet is having on this young population with regard to education related decision making by the students,” says Google India’s VP and MD Rajan Anandan.
Source: TOI
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