What Indians search on the net

BANGALORE: The recent JuxtConsult study on preferred websites of netizens reveals that leading portals dominate the Indian online space.

Indiatimes, Yahoo, Rediff, MSN and Sify are the established generic portals while Google, Naukri and Shaadi have earned good niche audiences.

Yahoo is the most preferred channel for communication- both for email and instant messaging. Yahoo has 38% user share. Rediff and Hotmail follow with 21% and 18% user base. Gmail is estimated to have 5% user base.

Yahoo is also the most popular medium for instant messaging and commands 74% share. Hotmail's messenger is a distant second with 15%.

Seventy-five percent of the Indian net population searches for information on Google. Yahoo provides answers to 6% of users while 3% users get informed through Rediff.

Twelve percent of all net users look for life partners online. Of these 31% head to Shaadi.com. Bharatmatrimony.com garners 16% of votes from users who search for their significant others on the web. Sixteen percent share also goes to Indiatimes dating service and Timesmatri.com.

Indiatimes enjoys the position of the most preferred news source on the web with 30% user share. The only news channel to feature in the top five is NDTV. Rediff occupies third position as an online news provider.

An overwhelming 44% of users prefer to shop online at ebay.in, formerly known as Baazee. Twenty-two percent of users pick Rediff as their choice of online shopping channel. Books and CD's are biggest online buys.

Only 17% of net users in India are bold enough to admit to surfing pornographic content on the web. Among them, a site with an Indian name leads the category with 16% users. Two popular search engines come next in the second and third positions.