Google Trends 2020: From making Dalgona coffee, sanitiser at home to cake recipes, top 'how to' queries Indians made this year

With the world riddled with the coronavirus pandemic, and deliveries and supplies affected due to the nationwide lockdown announced in March, most Indians took to Google to find ways to make things they couldn’t access locally, most notably paneer, jalebi, cake and Dalgona coffee, among others. Based on Google’s list of everything that trended in 2020, released this month, Indians also turned to the search engine to find out how to increase their immunity and how to make sanitiser at home. According to Google, “‘How to” searches billowed this year with queries that reflected the global shift to working from home and dealing with the pandemic: ‘How to make paneer?’ and ‘How to increase immunity?’ made the top of the list, followed by the all-important ‘How to make dalgona coffee’.” The first five on the list got rounded off with ‘How to link PAN card with Aadhaar card’ and finally ‘How to make sanitizer at home’. Last year “ How to Vote” was the most searched question on the search engine, followed by ‘How to link Aadhar to PAN’. The list was rounded off with ‘How to select channels as per TRAI’. Interestingly, ‘How to link Aadhaar to PAN’ was the only query that found place in the list on two subsequent years. In 2019, it was announced that it is mandatory for everyone to get their PAN card linked with Aadhaar before the end of the year. Subsequently, this year also saw a lot of people asking ‘How to link PAN card with Aadhaar card’. The recipe of Dalgona coffee, which is basically a Greek frappe, went viral in April. The drink is made up with four ingredients — equal parts of coffee, granulated sugar, hot water and hot milk and was accidentally invented by Nescafe representative named Dimitris Vakondios in 1957 in Thessalonik. With coronavirus changing the way things are done and experts asking people to don masks, and maintain social distancing, people also asked Google about ‘How to prevent coronavirus’. ‘How to make jalebi’ and ‘How to make cake at home’. With a number of cities and states inducing lockdown and shutting down borders, many people got stranded away from their homes and families. With rail and flight services being temporarily stopped, for many the only way to reach home was by road. However, to travel from one state to the other, they required an e-pass and subsequently, ‘‘How to apply e-pass’ became one of the most asked questions on Google.