With digitisation bridging the gap between big cities and smaller towns in India, schools, hobby classes, restaurants, hospitals, PG accommodation services, beauty parlours, hostels, car hire, hotels, and tutorials are the top 10 most searched services in 2022, as per a new report.
Justdial has released its annual search report, named “How India Searched in 2022?”, which says that smaller towns in India are taking to the internet when it comes to searching for services. In 2022, the number of searches in these towns were twice of that in big cities, the company said.
“Online searches for services have picked up massively in India’s smaller towns and cities. In 2022 they saw 2X searches vis-à-vis big cities. In 2021, this was 1.6X as compared to big cities, and hence indicates that smaller towns and cities are increasingly getting online,” a company spokesperson said.

Shrinking digital divide
In big cities, hobby classes, PG Accommodation services, schools, beauty parlours, and restaurants were the top 5 most searched services on the platform.
In smaller towns and cities, the priority was for schools, hospitals, hobby classes, restaurants and beauty parlours.
Education, tourism searches indicate normalcy
The year 2022 began with the third Covid-19 wave in the country and gradually, almost all pandemic-related restrictions were lifted. As a result, searches in education, health, and the tourism sector picked up indicating the normalisation of the economy.
The demand for tour operators, foreign exchange agents, bungalows on hire and resorts witnessed 2X growth as people took to revenge travel. “Searches for hotels during the year went up by 40% & that for rental cars by 70%,” the report noted.

Increase in wedding service-related searches
With minimal Covid-19 restrictions, the big fat Indian weddings were back with wedding services seeing a 40% growth in 2022. Furthermore, 55% of the demand for wedding jewellers and banquet halls came from the first four months of 2022. Interestingly, despite growth in wedding services, there was a decline in demand for wedding cards, which indicated the rise of e-invites.
Marginal rise in healthcare services
The report also notes that the country saw a decrease in health concerns due to Covid, which led to a marginal 7% rise in demand for healthcare services.
“Demand was maximum for dermatologists, sexologists, dentists, orthopaedics, and homoeopathic doctors as they witnessed a 24% growth in searches, and around 36% of the demand for hospitals in both big cities and smaller towns came between Jan-April, typically during the Omicron wave,” the report said.
The year also saw two times the growth in demand for coin collectors and five times the growth in demand for dealers of pre-owned cars.
To prepare the report, Justdial says it analysed data on its digital platforms in eight big cities, Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad with 700 smaller towns and cities.
Just Dial Limited provides local search-related services to users in India through multiple platforms such as websites, mobile site, mobile apps (both Android and iOS), over the telephone and text (SMS).