Bangalore: Do you search on the web before finalizing your decision on a new car? Well 50 percent of the car buyers does that, says a recent survey carried out by AC Nielsen for Google.

The survey also revealed that most of these online searchers change their decision or choice of brand after taking the input from web. Adding to it, an average car buyer spends nine to twelve week researching on the web before zeroing on his decision.

About 42 percent of the urban car buyers used search engines as the first source of information above the opinions from friends and experts. The study was carried out across top eight cities involving 2,791 respondents between January and February.

The maximum number of searches in the automotive area was for SUVs followed by sedans, luxury cars and hatch backs. People read user and expert reviews, watched videos, compared the cars, collected dealer contacts and most of them find information from the official websites of the manufacturers to be trustworthy.

According to Rajan Anandan, the VP of Google India, "the off-line study substantiates the growing number of auto-related searches we have seen on Google. Auto is one of the fastest growing vertical in terms of queries in Google. But most of the OEMs are not taking advantage of this area."