“Is coronavirus fake or real?”, “Is it an apocalypse?”, “Is it the end of the world?” — these are some of the queries that netizens have searched the most on the Internet over the past one month.
N95 masks and their price, mask sizes, children’s masks and their manufacturers were also among common searches, according to online analytics firm SEMrush. Its findings, shared with ET, shows an 11-fold increase in Covid-19 related searches in a span of two months, as the Covid-19 outbreak has spread to almost all the countries on the planet.
The keyword “coronavirus” has been searched over 140 lakh times and saw growth in search of more than nine-fold in March while in February it was searched over 16 lakh times .
Some of the most searched keywords remained hand sanitizer, lockdown, toilet paper, flu medicine, online delivery, curfew in India, home medical care among others.
On Twitter, almost 46% users were positive about the Covid-19 pandemic and 38% were negative, with the rest staying neutral.
The most commonly used hastags on twitter were #coronavirus, #indiafightscorna, #jantacurfew and #coronaviruspandemic.
“Our study demonstrates that Indians are actively trying to protect themselves from epidemics. The SEMrush study also captured data showing the kind of protective equipment Indians turn to protect themselves from airborne viruses. The n95 face mask was a relatively unknown product before the coronavirus epidemic; today, it is less so,” said Fernando Angulo, the head of communications at SEMrush.
Also, amid the Covid-19 outbreak, there has been a surge in online activities. A lot of netizens are also falling prey to misinformation and rumours being circulated on social media.
Cyberattacks have also doubled in the last two weeks, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ cybersecurity team. Due to increased hacker activity, phishing attempts have gone up by three times, and the work from home infrastructure is also under attack, ET had reported earlier.
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