It is more than a decade since the arrival of Internet in India. But NRIs continue to form a large chunk of traffic to Indian news sites.
This has been confirmed once again by ComScore.com, a global leader in measuring the digital world.
It has found that almost one-third of traffic to top Indian news sites comes from abroad.
The Times of India, which ranked as the largest site in the Newspaper category with nearly 7.9 million visitors in India (age 15 and older accessing from a home or work location), attracted 36.2 percent of its global traffic from outside of India in September.
Oneindia reached more than 4.4 million visitors in India in September 2011, with 31.6 percent of its global visitor base accessing from outside of the country, while HT Media Ltd. saw 28.1 percent of visitation from outside of India. In the case of NDTV this figure stood at 38.2 percent.
Among the selected news sites, Mid-Day.com and DeccanChronicle.com displayed the largest percentage of visitors from outside of India with both drawing more than 45 percent of their global audiences from outside of the country.
The same was true of financial and sports portals which drew a huge amount of their traffic from Indians living abroad.
Commenting on the traffic composition, Kedar Gavane, comScore director for India, noted: “Understanding this important geographic distinction in audience composition is important for publishers in delivering relevant content and for advertisers in reaching their desired audiences.”
The following are the figures released by ComScore.com in its press release:
