There are 9.4 million average daily visitors  accessing various media websites and the space has witnessed a 34 per cent increase in readership year-on-year, stated a Media Metrix report released by NASDAQ listed web analytics firm, comScore.

In the news category,  The Times of India portal continues to hold top spot with 12.7 million unique visitors in August this year. India.com Sites showed 25 percent growth breaking into the Top 10 for the first time with more than 7.1 million unique visitors. In addition to those two properties, 16 of the top 20 news properties are currently local news publishers.

The top five news portals includes The Times of India (12,715), Yahoo!-ABC News Network (10,721), HT Media Ltd (8,219), India Today Group (7,676) and India.com Sites (7,188).       

Data also suggests reader engagement for the news category has spiked within the past year, with users spending on average 31 percent more time on news sites at 41.6 minutes per visitor. DivyaBhaskar.co.in and Bhaskar.com demonstrated especially strong engagement at 100.3 minutes and 62.1 minutes, respectively. Other niche news sites with more modestly-sized audiences – including Jagbani.com, Jagbani.com, and Navbharat Times – also generated high engagement with a higher number of page views per visitor than the category average of 48

Continuing a past trend, many of the top Indian News sites see a significant amount of traffic from abroad. FirstPost.com generated the highest share of its audience from abroad at 51.3 percent, followed by Manorma Sites at 45%. The Times of India, as the most prominent news brand, also successfully extends its audience into other markets with 37.8 percent of its audience coming from abroad. NDTV, India.com Sites, and The Indian Express Group also have more than 30 percent of their respective audiences coming from outside of India.