Google Report: ‘Work From Home Jobs” Searches Rise 140%; “Online Doctor Consultation” Has 300% Growth

According to new data from a Google report which was revealed on Thursday, shows that as compared to 2019 there was 140% growth in “work from home jobs” searches from across India in 2020.

People Increasingly Doing More Things Online

Due to the virus, there has been a growing concern in Indians about health and hence they have resorted to trying new things online such as online doctor consultations. “Online doctor consultations” searches are growing at 300%. According to Google’s annual “Year in Search” report for the past year, these searches are being led by Manipur, Bihar and Karnataka

With the determined pursuit of progress, Indians have leverage their time spent online which in turn has accelerated the digital adoption.

The geographical expansion of new digital users in tier 2/3/4 locations as well as rural India has also been confirmed by the search data in the report, titled “India’s determined progress”.

This, underpinned by a preference for the mother tongue, has increased the importance of the 3Vs — voice, video and vernacular for a wider variety of uses.

There has been a stark shift as far as user behaviour is concerned, which is reflected in the search result, as there is an upsurge in the google queries for “learn”. This is more than a 30% year-on-year. Google said that this “Learning anything, anywhere” is one of the three key changes in user behaviour in 2020 according to search trends spanning Search and YouTube.

Google said that with four in five people coming to YouTube to learn something new, there were searches for career progression, upskilling, entrepreneurship, and supplementary income.

Changed Consumer Behaviour & Increased Importance Of Digital

Sanjay Gupta, Country Head and VP, Google India said that this has led to massive changes in consumer behaviour as well as how digital is becoming central to businesses.

He added that there is a need to rethink our business models, approach, solutions, marketing, and distribution in order to keep pace with India’s fast growing digital users as the momentum for the transformation has been set.

After, “Learning anything, anywhere” comes the second key theme of “Local first” which in turn highlights the increase in the demand and consumption of both local language content and local information.

Consequently, the year saw Google Translate being used over 17 billion times to translate web pages into Indic languages, said the report. Additionally, over 90% of YouTube users preferred to watch content in Indic languages. The year also saw a spike in demand for “local news” in order to stay tuned into developments in users’ immediate surroundings.