They say numbers don’t lie. Especially if those numbers are search numbers.
That too on Google. Red Lab tracked the Google Trends Report of 2021 to highlight the emerging trends basis people’s online behaviour and what they searched for last year.

Key Highlights

While 2020 saw us learning to adapt to new ways of living, in 2021, we leveraged our experience, resilience and inquisitiveness to become adept at these new ways. 

-Of the billions of searches we see every day, 15% are brand new — from new user segments, across categories, and for all kinds of queries

-Shoppers are increasingly relying on digital to evaluate their options and make sense of this torrent of information. For example, in 2021, we saw a 41% increase in search interest in “which brand is good” as people looked to build their consideration sets

-Research also showed that 83% of Indian consumers agreed that they would purchase from a brand that provided helpful and trustworthy information when they were exploring option

Relevance and Trust are therefore becoming more critical than ever to help shoppers overcome the decision and doubt paralysis. People are increasingly concerned about privacy, security and transparency, and are willing to invest time and resources into ensuring that brands align with their value systems and beliefs

A word of caution also to those marketers who thought that sustainability is just a ‘nice to do’ thing. It is increasingly becoming a ‘must do’ with “sustainable” rising to its highest search interest within the last five years in India in 20214 as consumers now expect the
brands they choose to share the same higher purpose.

Digital Is The New Mainstream

If 2020 saw millions of consumers migrate online, 2021 showed the staying power of digital. From shopping to services, new users who may have begun their online journeys due to necessity are now proactively deepening their usage. Speed, convenience and price are just a few of the reasons more consumers are now choosing digital-first lifestyles. 

Here’s proof: 

-In 2021, almost two-thirds of Indian consumers surveyed made the majority of their purchases online. 

-65% of Indian shoppers went online to buy a product they previously bought in-store. 

-Nine in 10 offline buyers are using an online touchpoint for information in their purchase journey.

-Search interest in online shopping has grown by 32% in India.

-We see 100% growth in search interest in online sale days as people do more online research to find out when their favourite brands are holding sales