DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 Bollywood or the Hindi film Industry, being an Indian film industry producing movies predominantly in Indian languages (mostly Hindi) and aimed at Indian viewers, is expected to be most popular in India. There is popularity outside India, but one would normally expect the level of popularity outside India to be significantly less than what it is in India. And whatever popularity there is outside India is is perceived to be due to the large number of Indians living abroad. Right? You could not be more wrong. I was just browsing Google trends and tried to find out who all from Bollywood have been popular in the last decade and what I found some very interesting stats. Here are some screen shots I took: For the search term Bollywood: Yes, it's not India, it's Pakistan. And if you think that just one search term can be misleading for a judgement, you have seen nothing yet. Hang on.
DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 Here is Google trends for "Indian Movies". Search traffic from Pakistan beats India by such a margin that an outsider would think that Bollywood belongs to Pakistan.
DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 Shahrukh Khan: The king Khan rules better in Pakistan. And in Bangladesh. Then comes India.
DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 And if you thought it was limited only to actors, you are wrong again. Lara Dutta:
DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 Rani Mukherjee: Pakistan has been pushed to no2 here. But not by India, but by another padosi: Bangladesh.
DomainK Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 Well, I am flattered and so should be all these stars. Thanks to our brothers across the border for showing such great interest in our movies.
Sachinism Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 Well' date=' I am flattered and so should be all these stars. Thanks to our brothers across the border for showing such great interest in our movies.[/quote'] Conspiracy from the Zionist Google because nobody in Pakistan watches Bollywood movies Oh and BTW its not limited to Bollywood, 'Star Plus' and the names of tv shows produce very similar results
IKnowU Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 I bet they search the term "india" more then indians themselves :rotfl:
zen Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 I have seen many Pakistanis enjoy even the crappiest of Bollywood movies ... Hindi movies run constantly in homes of many Pakistanis :P
Ram Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 Well, If you’re a converervative Muslim country that makes crappy movies, then it is only obvious that those people will turn elsewhere to satisfy their recreational needs. And Bollywood movies fit the bill just about perfect because a) They can understand Hindi (by and large), and b) At the core, we are still very similar people, in terms of our ways of life/family culture. So a Bollywood love triangle resonates way more to a Pakistani, than a Hollywood action flick. And ironically, the Pakistani govt. helped popularize the our movies there by banning screening of all Indian movies there, partly due to pressure from their domestic film industry who were worried that Hindi movies, if allowed to screen there, will simply crush them. But mostly, the reason for the ban was to maintain the status quo of a an anti-India sentiment that isn’t massive, but just large enough to be utilized whenever required. If Bollywood movies are freely allowed to screen in Pakistan, then, at some point, India and Indian way of life will start becoming mainstream in Pakistan’s society. That is simply unacceptable for the sizeable Anybody-and-everybody-who-survives-on-the-anti-India-sentiment-Industry (prime example, Zaid Hamid). And we all know that whenever something it taken away from people, it only accentuates their need for it. This maybe only a fringe factor, but I am sure a signirficant proportion of the Pakistanis are either completely captivated, or moderately puzzled by the success of Muslim actors in Bollywood. For many, they still don’t really consider Indian Muslims to be as Indian as say the rest of the country and then for them to see so many Muslim stars rise to the top in Bollywood must be rather puzzling.
Late Cut Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 The more repressed you are as a society, the more things "pop out" elsewhere. Why do you think indian movies were all about "love" and "romance" for such a long time? One of my friends recently came back from india, and she was pretty put off by how indian men were oggling/following/stalking her. She put it right up there with this one time in Kenya where some guy offered her mom a bunch of camels and carpets for her to be his wife.
Mariyam Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 Don't want to be a doubting Dorothy, still I can't help but notice: Something looks really amiss in the statistics that you've put up. I'm not even talking about Pakistan having more Bollywood related 'hits' than India. But Bhopal and Mahape have maximum number of search hits in India? More than Mumbai and Delhi? Bhopal and Mahape might not even have electricty for 24 hours. How are these search hits counted? If I search for the same thing 100 times from one PC is it counted as 100 hits or 1 hit. Mahape is a really small place. Its near New Bombay. Its so surprising that they have more hits than Mumbai. I don't have any numbers at hand, but I am quite sure that the number of people in Mahape would be lesser than the number of people having internet in Mumbai. Unless there is an organization in Mahape whose sole objective is to make India catch up with Pakistan on Bollywood related search hits, I don't think they can feature so high in the list. :P
Mariyam Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 The more repressed you are as a society' date=' the more things "pop out" elsewhere. Why do you think indian movies were all about "love" and "romance" for such a long time? One of my friends recently came back from india, and she was pretty put off by how indian men were oggling/following/stalking her. [b']She put it right up there with this one time in Kenya where some guy offered her mom a bunch of camels and carpets for her to be his wife. Did she accept? I mean come on, carpets >>>> tiles. Tiles are over hyped and over priced
The Outsider Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 Don't want to be a doubting Dorothy, still I can't help but notice: Something looks really amiss in the statistics that you've put up. I'm not even talking about Pakistan having more Bollywood related 'hits' than India. But Bhopal and Mahape have maximum number of search hits in India? More than Mumbai and Delhi? Bhopal and Mahape might not even have electricty for 24 hours. How are these search hits counted? If I search for the same thing 100 times from one PC is it counted as 100 hits or 1 hit. Mahape is a really small place. Its near New Bombay. Its so surprising that they have more hits than Mumbai. I don't have any numbers at hand, but I am quite sure that the number of people in Mahape would be lesser than the number of people having internet in Mumbai. Unless there is an organization in Mahape whose sole objective is to make India catch up with Pakistan on Bollywood related search hits, I don't think they can feature so high in the list. :P Think the hits are counted from the nearest nodes of the ISP you are using. For example, if you are using BSNL in Bombay but they have some main hub in Mahape, which gets transmitted to the outside world then the IP address will register to be coming from Mahape. It's possible some major ISP has a hub in Mahape. Not sure how it would explain Bhopal though.
DomainK Posted January 28, 2011 Author Posted January 28, 2011 Did she accept? I mean come on' date=' carpets >>>> tiles. Tiles are over hyped and over priced[/quote'] Think the hits are counted from the nearest nodes of the ISP you are using. For example, if you are using BSNL in Bombay but they have some main hub in Mahape, which gets transmitted to the outside world then the IP address will register to be coming from Mahape. It's possible some major ISP has a hub in Mahape. Not sure how it would explain Bhopal though. Google's city-wise breakups in the west are quite accurate. In India, they are still far from accurate. The state-wise breakups are better and and the country-wise breakups are very accurate. This data is widely used in PPC ad campaigns inaccuracy does not go well with those who spend money for geographical targeting. In the west however, their data is very accurate to the point of providing geographically targeted local ads even for particular sections within a city.
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