Oriyas went online looking for ‘love’, Delhi’s babus clogged the Web on April 14 — the day the government cleared the Sixth Pay Commission report — and Maharashtra logged on to grapple with the terror attacks and the economic crisis.

These are the region-wise break-up of search trends on Google for 2008. The search engine giant compiles its “zeitgeist” list every year, revealing the most popular keywords.

‘YouTube’, ‘Orkut’, ‘Katrina Kaif’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Pay Commission’ were among the fastest rising search terms in India in 2008. States had their preferences: if you searched for ‘IPL’, you were likely living in Bengal, where the IPL site topped the list of searches — ahead of Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa, Punjab and Rajasthan — during its inaugural season in April-May. Bengal also topped in searches for ‘Euro 2008’, with Karnataka and Maharashtra following.

DDA’s housing draw in December got more searches in Haryana and UP — which includes Gurgaon and Noida — than in Delhi. The railway reservation site, IRCTC, either topped or was in the top-5 search lists of most states. It was the fifth fastest rising search in India.

A search for ‘financial crisis’ showed Kerala on top, but ‘global financial crisis’ was most searched in Maharashtra, followed by Delhi. Kerala topped a search for ‘suicide’ — however, countless Malayalis also read ‘Manorama online’, and searched themselves — ‘Mallus’ made it to the top of the 10 fastest rising searches in the state.

With urban India battling the bulge, ‘how to reduce weight’ topped India’s ‘Top How-to Searches’. This was followed by ‘how to kiss’, ‘how to earn money’ and ‘how to get pregnant’.

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