Experian launches Hitwise Internet measurement service for India

Experian, the global information services company, has further expanded its global Marketing Services footprint with the launch of Experian Hitwise in India. Experian’s Internet measurement service will help domestic and international marketers operating in India to improve their online marketing, content development, affiliate strategies and search tactics. 

Experian Hitwise reports on more than 200,000 websites across 119 industries and over six million search terms, based on the anonymized and aggregated Internet activity of an opt in panel of Indian Internet users across the country. Used by some of the world’s best known brands, Experian Hitwise also operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, France and Brazil. 

Navin Chandani, Managing Director of Experian Marketing Services in India, said: “The launch of Experian Hitwise today, and the recent introduction of CheetahMail, underlines our commitment to investing and growing our market-leading portfolio of digital marketing services in India. India has the fourth largest Internet population in the world and one that is growing rapidly and Experian Hitwise will provide marketers with the kind of competitive intelligence to help them accurately measure and drive even greater returns from their digital marketing activities.” 

Latest Insights from Experian Hitwise: Google, Google India and Facebook are the most visited websites in India, accounting for 1 in every 4 Internet visits. Most Popular Websites across all industry categories ranked by Visits Share for the week ending 1 January 2011 
 

Rank	Websites	Visits Share
1	Google India	11.13%
2	Google	7.61%
3	Facebook	5.26%
4	Gmail	4.92%
5	Yahoo! India	3.37%
6	YouTube	2.38%
7	Yahoo! Mail India	2.21%
8	Orkut – India	2.08%
9	Rediff	1.49%
10	Orkut	1.29%

During the week ending 01/01/11, Google (www.google.co.in) was the most visited website in India, representing 11.13% of all Indian Internet visits – equivalent to 1 in every 10. Second and the 4th position are retained by Google network site (www.google.com) & Gmail. YouTube is the 6th most visited website in India. This makes Google as the most popular group of websites on the Internet with approximately 25% of all Indian Internet visits – equivalent to almost 1 in every 4 visits. 

Facebook is the 3rd most visited website in India, representing 5.26% of all Indian Internet visits during the week ending 01/01/11. The site accounted for more than one third of all Indian visits to social networks over the same period, picking up over twice as many visits as second placed YouTube. Orkut (www.orkut.com) is still active in India as the third most popular social network. 

Search engines are the most popular sites in India 

Search Engines are the most visited category of websites in India, representing for 19.59% of all Indian Internet visits during the week ending 01/01/11. Social networks and Forums rank second, representing 12.57% of India Internet visits. Banking and Financial Institutions is the 10th most visited category of websites. 

Navin Chandani commented: “Search engines, social networks and email services are the top categories on the Internet. In India, marketers have realized the importance of search engine based marketing strategies and in the past few years we have seen almost every one taking up Search Engine Optimization. However, Hitwise Clickstream data suggests that social media in India is still gaining momentum and it will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming months and how marketers start to develop their social media strategies.” 

Most Popular Sub-Industries across all industry categories ranked by Visits Share for the week ending 1st January 2011
 

Rank	Sub-Industries	Visits Share
1	Search Engines	19.59%
2	Social Networking and Forums	12.97%
3	Email Services	8.11%
4	Portal Frontpages	6.56%
5	Multimedia	3.76%
6	Software	2.44%
7	Games	2.04%
8	Telecommunications	1.95%
9	Reference – Education	1.90%
10	Banks and Financial Institutions	1.89%

 
Visit the Experian web site at: www.experian.in for more details