Experian Hitwise Launches Internet Measurement Service for India

Although global marketers often dream of taming the Chinese dragon, the Indian elephant may get them farther, faster. Why? The Indian market is now more measurable.

Experian, the global information services company, today announced that it is launching Hitwise in India. The Internet measurement service will help domestic and international marketers operating in India to improve their online marketing, content development, affiliate strategies and search tactics.

In a press release, Navin Chandani, Managing Director of Experian Marketing Services in India, said: “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.”

India’s Most Visited Online Properties
There are lots of other interesting data in the press release. For example, Hitwise analysis shows that Google, Google India and Facebook are the most visited websites in India. Together, they account for 1 in every 4 Internet visits.

During the week ending Jan. 1, 2011, Google India (www.google.co.in) was the most visited website in India, representing 11.13% of all Indian Internet visits. The second and fourth position were Google US (www.google.com) and Gmail. In addition, YouTube was the sixth most visited website in India. This makes Google the most popular group of websites in the country with approximately 25 percent of all Indian Internet visits.

According to Experian Hitwise India, Facebook is the third most visited website in India, representing 5.26 percent of all Indian Internet visits during the week ending Jan. 1, 2011. 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 the third most popular social network in India.

Search Engines Vs Social Networks
It’s also worth noting that search engines are the most visited category of websites in India, representing for 19.59 percent of all Indian Internet visits during the week ending Jan. 1, 2011. Social networks and Forums rank second, representing 12.57 percent of Internet visits in India. Banking and Financial Institutions are the 10th most visited category of websites.

Google.co.in accounted for 87.36 percent of all searches conducted in India for the 12 weeks ending Jan. 1, 2011. Google.com received 5.43 percent of searches while in.search.yahoo.com received 3.60 percent and search.yahoo.com 1.08 percent, respectively.

In the press release, Chandani said, “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.”

Experian Hitwise will report on more than 200,000 sites across 119 industries and over 6 million search terms in India. For more information, visit the Experian India website.

How important is measurement to global marketers? It’s the elephant in the room.