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Indian Search Site

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PCQ Bureau
New Update
Year Winner
2000 Rediff.com
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The number of Indian sites has been growing exponentially–at

the end of the last fiscal year, it had crossed the 80,000 mark. Among these a

lot of search engines came up too. And we decided to introduce this as a new

category this year. But surprisingly, the winners are not dedicated search

engines, but portals that also have a search facility.

Indian Search Site

User's Choice Club  UPI
Rediff.com 100
indiatimes.com 59
indya.com 30
indianinfo.com 26
Khoj.com 24

Rediff.com is the winner and Indiatimes.com comes second with

59 points. Indya.com and Indiainfo.com also managed to enter the User’s Choice

Club, scoring 30 and 26 points respectively. The only dedicated search engine to

have made the cut is Khoj.com.

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On the Web, you are nowhere without a good search engine. And

portals were quick to cash in on this. As the average Indian user warmed up to

the Net and Indian content on the Web, the top portals started branding their

search facilities as their answer to finding relevant information on the Web.

Rediff advertised in mass media, highlighting the number of results and

step-by-step instructions on how to run a search at their site. It even

attempted to brand its facility as Rediff Search. Indiatimes quickly moved in

with its claim that its search was the best and made use of the best technology

available, and even dared anyone to test it out. With so much mass media

coverage for the two, it really isn’t surprising that they have come out as

the winners.

Other portals also sat up to make their search facilities

prominent. Some of them highlight the hottest topic of the day as hot keywords,

and list the number of hits that their search generates for it. But eventually

it really isn’t the number of hits that makes a search engine. It’s the

relevance of the hits and their accuracy that count the most. Ease of use, the

speed of search, the categorization within the directories at the site and their

comprehensiveness is what will finally separate the wheat from the chaff.

There are some good Indian search engines around that are slowly working

their way up. With a bit of publicity, they could make the cut next year. But

will they rise and shine or just wilt and die, we’ll have to wait and see.

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