New Delhi: Indians ranked second in search queries related to education, a study released here by search engine Google India said Wednesday.

The list, topped by the U.S., says India has risen to second spot from the eighth position over the last four years.

"From eighth rank in 2008, there has been an explosive growth in education related searches in India in last 3-4 years. It is even ahead of China," said Rajan Anandan, vice president and managing director, Google India.

The study was conducted by Google search query patterns along with an offline study by TNS Australia. The study sampled 2,229 students between 18-35 years of age across New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

The study observed a 46 percent year-on-year growth on education related search on Google in India.

"There has been 135 percent year-on-year growth on educational queries coming from mobile. Thus making mobile phone a source of 22 percent of the total educational queries," the study added.

Higher education ruled the roost as nearly 40 percent of the total queries were based on higher education courses and institutes.

"Indian students are making large part of their decision based on the information available on the web," Anandan said.

About 60 percent of Indian students, who have access to internet use it as their first source of research for information related to education courses and institutes, he said.

Interestingly, India's premier institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) have been the "most searched institutions" between Jan to June.

"The study shows a list of most searched institutes on Google from Jan 2012 - June 2012 which includes IIT Delhi and IIT Chennai among engineering colleges and IIM Ahmedabad among management institutes," the study noted.

Among private universities, Sikkim Manipal University and Amity University were the most searched.

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