“How to get twins?”, “how to wear a sari?”, “how to make a chocolate cake?”, “how to get rid of dandruff?”: These are among the most frequently-asked questions by 60 million-odd Indian women on the Internet in 2012, a new Google India study reveals.
The study “Women and the Web” says of the 60 million women, 24 million logged on to the Web daily, while 75 per cent were below 35 and fairly affluent.
These women spent an average of 50 minutes online and mostly accessed the Internet from home (66 per cent. More interesting is what they did online: checking email ranked first, closely followed by using search engines, social networking, music and video downloads, reading educational content, searching for jobs, hearing music and watching video and reading Indian news.
Google India vice-president and managing director Rajan Anandan said the data showed “women were not only going online for social networking or entertainment, but for more utilitarian reasons too”.
Google found that from April 2012 to March 2013, the women searched online for apparel and accessories, food and drink, baby care and hair and skincare. Apparel and accessories was the most searched-for category, haircare and skincare saw the fastest growth (50 and 42 per cent respectively, compared to 26 per cent for apparel).
Other popular queries included how to make hair bows, walk in high heels, breastfeed, get pregnant, straighten hair, apply eyeliners and more. Google estimates that five million women shopped or made online transactions annually. For other users, the Internet significantly infl-uenced buying decisions, particularly baby care and skincare products.