Orkut is the most popular social network in India

Royal Pingdom has some analysis on most searched social networks in various countries using Google Insights. The analysis is based on keywords, so it doesn’t actually tell the popularity of a social network in a country, as search volume doesn’t correlate well with the usage of the site.

The analysis shows some interesting results.

• Facebook is most popular in Turkey and Canada.
• Friendster and Imeem are most popular in the Philippines.
• LinkedIn is most popular in India.
• Twitter is most popular in Japan.
• LiveJournal is more popular in Russia than it is in the United States.
• Orkut is more popular in Iran (10th country popularity-wise) than it is in the United States.
• MySpace is the only social network which is most popular in the United States.
• MySpace, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Xanga, and Twitter are the only social networks in this survey which have the United States in their top five countries, popularity-wise. That is just five out of twelve.

The survey lists countries with highest interest in various social networks, that means that particular social network is most searched in “x” country but that does not mean that “x” social network is the most popular in that country.

For example, LinkedIn is most searched in India compared to other countries, but it is not the most popular social network in India. Orkut is the most popular social network in India, if you compare Orkut to Linkedin and others, orkut is way ahead of all these social networks.

The below image shows LinkedIn search is popular in India compared to other countries, you can see this data here.

The below image shows Orkut is the most popular social network in India (based on search volume), see this data here.

These is just search volume data, so it may not correlate with the usage of the site. But still Orkut search in India is so high we can consider it as the most popular social network in India.