Mohanlal beats Rajni and Kamal hands down
Sidin Vadukut -
Thursday, August 07, 2008 3:19 PM
Now before you go all "Rediff messageboard" on this post give me a second here. I am not trying to say that Mohanlal, that timeless hero of the Malayalam film scene, actually bettered his Tamil brothers in any challenge physical or thespian. (Though he would do so without breaking into a sweat of course.)
No no. Instead he beats them on the ultimate stage: Google search popularity. A simple search on Google Trends India, the service that lets you measure the relative popularity of search terms across time and search origin, throws up some surprising results.
Not only is Mohanlal the more popular search term across India overall in the last 12 months, but he also beats Kamal and the "Superstar" comfortably in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and er... Mahape. There is no competition in Kerala of course. But most shockingly Lal-ettan actually beats out Rajni in Chennai as well. (Gasp! Deyvame! Kadavulai! Holy hairpiece!)
Not one to under-analyze I went on to see how Mohanlal, Kamal and Rajni fared Google-search-wise among our nuclear-brothers in the US of A. The results were interesting here too. Lal was still tops overall but not in every individual city. For instance Lal ruled in San Fransisco but Kamal cornered Washington DC effortlessly.
(Disclaimer: There is some talk in the US media of a sex criminal called Aaron Mohanlal. This may have skewed results somewhat.)
What can all this data possibly mean? Is Lal really the most popular film star in India? Is Rajni a fading star? Will I need personal protection after this blog post?
You tell me.
India search trend data here -> http://www.google.co.in/trends?q=kamal+hassan%2C+rajnikant%2C+mohanlal&ctab=0&hl=en&geo=IN&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0
US of A search trend data here -> http://www.google.co.in/trends?q=kamal+hassan%2C+rajnikant%2C+mohanlal&ctab=0&hl=en&geo=US&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0