In India, Google Rules but Visitors Most Engaged on Facebook [Study]
Google dominates India in reach but Facebook keeps visitors most engaged at an average of four hours, based on comScore June stats.
Google ranked as the top online destination in India, dominating almost 95 percent reach of the online population, followed by Facebook and Yahoo, based on stats from comScore Media Metrix in the month of June.
Facebook might trail behind Google (58 million) in the number of total unique visitors at close to 51 million (83 percent reach) but when measured in terms of visitor engagement on the site by average minutes per visitor, Facebook came up first as the most engaged site. Visitors spent an average of nearly four hours on the social network in June.
Google came in second place in visitor engagement with average time spent on Google properties at 2.5 hours. YouTube accounted for the bulk of time spent on Google sites, according to the report.
When compared among local companies, media company Network 18 led as the most engaged site with visitors spending an average of close to 32 minutes during the month.
Although Google, Facebook, Yahoo (65.5 percent), and Microsoft (48 percent) topped the charts in terms of reach in India, local sites such as Times Internet (34 percent), Network 18 (29 percent), Rediff.com India (25 percent), and NIC.in (22 percent) made it into the top 10 ranking as illustrated in the chart below.
Social Networking Top Online Activity in India
With one in four online minutes spent on social networking sites in India, it is no surprise that social networking is the top online activity in the country.
Social networking accounted for more than 25 percent of all time spent online in June, an increase of 0.8 points year-on-year.
This is followed by Entertainment at 10 percent share of total minutes, a rise in 1.2 points from the previous year – the highest percentage increase among all activities measured for the online categories.
Portals came in third at close to 9 percent share of online minutes for June. However, when compared year-on-year, it has dropped the most among all categories at close to three points.
Retail sites showed the most promising growth at 0.5 points increase from the previous year as comScore suggests that online shopping continued to gain adoption in the country.
Additional charts generated by Fan Shek.
