Traffic Stats of Indian Local Search Services – Who is Heading North?
We profiled the relative traffic of top local search services in India in the month of September 2008 and it’s time to revisit the metrics again.
Based on Comscore data (one of the top Confusions in Digital Media measurement), we compiled the list of local-search-only portals (which are tracked by Comscore) and here is the traffic data (April 2008-09):
Traffic of Local Search Services in India
- JustDial and askLaila are heading northwards (JD has managed to maintain the gap, but askLaila is fairly strong in distribution game)
- Everybody else seems to be doing ‘just okay’.
- Yahoo local search’s traffic seems to justify the color (coincidence!)
| JustDial | AskLaila | Yahoo | Burrp | Metromela | OnYoMo | |
| Total UU (‘000) * | 1290.19 | 463.29 | 105.91 | 140.62 | 47.39 | 23.85 |
| Total PV (mn) * | 29.72 | 2.02 | 0.44 | 0.89 | 0.13 | 0.12 |
![Traffic of Local Search Services in India [Pageviews]](http://www.pluggd.in/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/comscore-local-search-india_PV.png "Traffic of Local Search Services in India [Pageviews]")
Traffic of Local Search Services in India [Pageviews
Since Comscore doesn’t track Google, Sulekha and Guruji’s local search service separately, we have shared the overall traffic data with you (India data only).
Last time, we adjusted the numbers and some of you disagreed (questions like: what’s the rationale for assuming 3% of Google’s traffic goes to local search?) etc.. – so this time,we keep the loop open ended for you to make your own inferences.
| Sulekha | Guruji | ||
| Total UU (in ‘000) | 22,423 | 2,453 | 1839.50 |
| Total PV (mn) | 2,053.35 | 20 | 29.53 |
Also, it’s important to note that web traffic is an indicator of service’s usage – for instance, Justdial and Google are available on voice, askLaila on DTH/IM etc.
Share your opinion/inference from the data.
What’s your favourite local search service? Or does the search starts from Google only?
> Check out our complete coverage of local search market in India
* UU stands for Unique Users. PV stands for Page views.
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
It would be interesting to know how many of these search engines get their traffic themselves. I mean, the traffic that they don’t earn from Google SEO.
I say this is important because as soon as google local becomes a real player (better data, better maps, better reviews maybe) all the SEO advantages for these “local search engines” will vanish.
The truth is, all search starts from google, the user writes his query in the google search bar and not justdial/asklaila/onyomo search bar. It’s didn’t matter if these search engines didn’t have an engine at all, just a local directory would suffice.
I agree – but data depth counts (and it shows up in the relative traffic as well).
The key qn is also to see how many of these services are able to engage users (using UGC et al)
Where people go on Justdial.com:
* 28.6% justdial.com
* 21.9% wwww.justdial.com
* 21.7% dv.justdial.com
* 17.2% search.justdial.com
* 4.7% hr.justdial.com
http://alexa.com/siteinfo/justdial.com
Other than Just Dial everyone is in for the valuation. Just Dial is 10+ years old, foundation is good. If you are following justdial.com you can see they are continuously innovating. They too have the money power but they are using their brain power
Local search in India have only one goal – how to beat Just Dial.
I think their website is nowhere at par both in terms of design and search quality compared to any other local search players. I feel they should work on innovation and improve their naive search website design.
I am amazed that sites like onyomo.com and metromeal.com still feature on these write ups, these sites are sites with less than 50k UUs per month, I am sure there are better performing sites in this sphere.
Is there anything different that just dial and ask laila are doing that they are not plateauing like all other players. I am particularly concerned about burrp for their inability to grow traffic despite such great content. I feel the frequency and number of people searching for FnB related information is limited and plateaus fast. Adding more categories and push it aggressively will help. What is the opinion of industry experts?
But yes as someone said all these places get over 80% of their traffic from google again concerning. Isn’t it?
Can you use some better colors in your graph? I am hardly able to make out what the other traffic lines look like.
UGC – it still does not make a lot of difference for a substantial amount of population. the only site, i feel in India, who has done will in this is mouthshut. burrp, also gets 75%+ traffic for its tv.
Actually, for local search in India, it is harder to monetise web traffic for lead generation then it is for phone queries. the only player which does that well is Sulekha and that too is loosing revenues on this front.
Google Local becoming a major player is not easy. The one big differentiator is quality of data. And JD has mastered the technique – when you call them for a search, they in turn ask you your business details. that helps to keep data fresh and updated. for online search, since there are only 40million active users and majority are not business owners, therefore for online players, its a little more costly to maintain quality data. Same holds for Google.
True true, not much is happening in local search in India. The closest is the UGC effort in local listings with reviews such as restaurants, hotels, fast food chains. mouthshut.com seems to be the only one even that has built a model for consumer content.
rest are just around
but just dial is the most un ethical company i have ever seen in my life of 50 years
i used their services, paid them a lot, they always think about selling but not about worthy customer service the kind they try to project when they come to sell. once selling is over they care a bull shit about the one who is feeding their business, and executives dont even realise that their salaries are paid from my hard own money