Google sites received the majority of searches conducted in India according to a study of the online search market from comScore.
Google sites in India had more than 1 billion searches conducted in June, representing 81 percent of the market. Yahoo sites ranked a distant second with 117 million searches accounting for 9.4 percent. Ask Network landed in the third spot with 24 million searches representing 1.9 percent of the market.
Microsoft sites trailed Ask grabbing 22 million searches and accounting for 1.7 percent of the market. Indian Internet portal Rediff.com was ranked fifth with 18 million searches accounting for 1.5 percent.
“The Indian search market is dominated by global Internet brands, with Google attracting the wide majority of searches,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president.
“As the top local player in the search market, Indian web portal Rediff.com attracts slightly less than 2 percent of all searches, indicating that there is substantial room for growth among the local Internet brands.”
India is one the most rapidly emerging Internet markets in the world in terms of overall usage growth, but the country has less frequent search behavior than its global counterparts. Of the 37 countries individually reported by comScore, India ranked second to last with 53 searches per user during the month, below the global average of 93.
“Though India represents more than 15 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for less than 2 percent of global Internet searches,” said Flanagan. “It will be interesting to see if this gap narrows as more people in India gain Internet access and ramp up their use of search over time.”
