India - Google/Yahoo the most visited sites

comScore, the Internet research firm based in the US, has released its findings of the most visited Internet properties in India. In May, Google's sites received 19.7 million unique visitors from India.After Google, Yahoo! sites are the second most visited Internet properties with 18.7 million unique visitors. This is followed by Microsoft's sites with almost 12 million unique visitors and Rediff.com with 9.2 million. Other sites on the list include AOL, the sites of Times Internet Ltd, eBay and Wikipedia. The Government’s site, home.nic.in received almost 6 million unique visitors in May and the Indian Railways’ site received 4.4 million. Naukri.com has shown the most growth in terms of increase in the number of unique visitors, which grew 55 per cent over the last year to 5 million unique visitors. Matrimonial site, Bharatmatrimony has also shown significant growth—46 per cent—to 3.4 million unique visitors in May. comScore's findings also show that 28.8 million people in India, over 15 years of age, accessed the Internet in May. This is a 27 per cent increase over last year. However, this audience only represents 3 per cent of the population of the country. The report states that the average online user in India surfed the Internet 25 times in a month, for an average of 28 minutes per visit. The heaviest Internet usage is among users between 15-24 years, who spend an average of 12 hours online in a month. The fastest growing categories of web properties last year were maps (64 per cent), sports (60 per cent), entertainment and movies (55 per cent) and finance news and research (52 per cent). “India truly represents one of the most promising emerging Internet markets, given both the size and technological sophistication of the population. While global Internet brands like Google and Yahoo! currently reign as the most visited Web properties in India, several local players also have strong positions in the market,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore, in the official communique.