Number of Local Language Sites in India stands at a Pathetic 1249!

[a2zofb2b]

A research jointly conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB has revealed the pathetic state of local language websites in India. The total number of local language websites in India, according to this study, stood at 1249. This number was arrived at by using a language specific web crawler and a manual search.

http://iamai.in/PRelease_detail.aspx?nid=1744&NMonth=12&NYear=2008

[jacksonm]

And this is surprising to anyone? In India, educated folks (the ones who know how to use a computer) use ENGLISH. Or some vague similarity thereof, at least when spoken... The writing is usually very eloquent and precise.

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[bwhhisc]

Those numbers IMO (at least for Hindi) are not accurate based on my surfing and searching for Hindi names.

A total of 713 Hindi sites which 394 are blogs? That leaves only 319 total Hindi websites total....

[Rubber Duck]

This frankly is just total bollucks.

Most of my Hindi names and indeed other local language names are getting xxx,xxx results and fair percentage are getting x,xxx,xxx and more.

Can you really reconcile these results. Who do I believe, Google or What was it they are called again?

[Rubber Duck]

And this is surprising to anyone? In India, educated folks (the ones who know how to use a computer) use ENGLISH. Or some vague similarity thereof, at least when spoken... The writing is usually very eloquent and precise.

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You are talking out of your arse!

[bwhhisc]

You are talking out of your arse!


I sure hope the "mobile" association guys aren't driving after whatever they are smoking. :p

They claim there is only ONE website in Hindi about "software". Maybe they can look thru all these and tell us which one is the ONLY one!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%89%E0%A4%AB%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%9F%E0%A4%B5%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%B0%22&aq=f&oq=

[later777]

I would not discard the nationalistic card. As it seems to me, this is pretty much where the world is going. Difficult times will increase protectionism.
English speaking ruling elites in India are strong but India will not surge on the back of USA or Britain, simply because USA and Britain could not care less about new India if she does not serve them as provider of cheap workforce. So English is just a matter of convenience now but they would have to promote local languages in order to develop the country further.

[a2zofb2b]

This frankly is just total bollucks.
Can you really reconcile these results. Who do I believe, Google or What was it they are called again?


The study by IMAI is regarding number of website not unique subdomains or unique pages.
Example: blogger.com is 1 website, wheras In google it could be hundreds of subdomains and thousands of pages.
Moreover, Google results include lot of spam/useless auto generated pages.

Ask any native Indian users in this forum, they could easily spot the genuine pages from the junk pages just by looking into the search results.
(I can read and write in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil and I occasionally use Indian language sites for Headline and Movie news)

The study results may not be accurate but, it does accurately reflect the current state of the Indian language usage on the web.
Although, I expect the usage to increase over time, I don't expect any of the Indian language to the the top 10 widely used languages on the web.

[later777]

This is a long shot, I'd agree but prime keywords in Hindi should do well... Just don't come up with CreditCheck.com in Malayalam and you should be fine.

[Rubber Duck]

Even if it where a thousands of pages per site. It is still too few to be able to reconcile. Sorry, I just don't buy this.


The study by IMAI is regarding number of website not unique subdomains or unique pages.
Example: blogger.com is 1 website, wheras In google it could be hundreds of subdomains and thousands of pages.
Moreover, Google results include lot of spam/useless auto generated pages.

Ask any native Indian users in this forum, they could easily spot the genuine pages from the junk pages just by looking into the search results.
(I can read and write in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil and I occasionally use Indian language sites for Headline and Movie news)

The study results may not be accurate but, it does accurately reflect the current state of the Indian language usage on the web.
Although, I expect the usage to increase over time, I don't expect any of the Indian language to the the top 10 widely used languages on the web.

[jacksonm]

Even if it where a thousands of pages per site. It is still too few to be able to reconcile. Sorry, I just don't buy this.


Be sure to let us know when you get the inevitable stampede of monetizable traffic to your hindi elephant.com. :p

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[Rubber Duck]

Be sure to let us know when you get the inevitable stampede of monetizable traffic to your hindi elephant.com. :p

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There is very significant traffic on Indian domains. Monetization is tough because there are very few Google Adwords for Hindi languages. Nothing new there.

However, the level of Google Results is now comparable with Chinese when we first started out, and the problem of the sites not being in Unicode are similar. Nobody is saying that there are no sites in Chinese now, and it wasn't true then either. Hindi has always had very significant web content, but just not in Unicode, but that appears to be substantially changing.

The answer to this argument is to be found in the Newspaper and Magazine distributions which can be found in the download version of the report. This data clearly demonstrates that English is on a one way ticket to oblivion.

[drbiohealth]

Would you close your eyes if you were to see the web content in your mother tongue?

I suspect there is a very close association between the language, the culture, and the spiritualism of any region on Earth. And a link between them is not easy to do away with.

Even in today's hey days of English (relative to other languages), how much traffic/rev are you getting on your generic .in/co.ins that are not typos of any established sites? Extrapolate?

I feel that good content in local languages is the real opportunity of today.

The study by IMAI is regarding number of website not unique subdomains or unique pages.
Example: blogger.com is 1 website, wheras In google it could be hundreds of subdomains and thousands of pages.
Moreover, Google results include lot of spam/useless auto generated pages.

Ask any native Indian users in this forum, they could easily spot the genuine pages from the junk pages just by looking into the search results.
(I can read and write in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil and I occasionally use Indian language sites for Headline and Movie news)

The study results may not be accurate but, it does accurately reflect the current state of the Indian language usage on the web.
Although, I expect the usage to increase over time, I don't expect any of the Indian language to the the top 10 widely used languages on the web.

[bwhhisc]

Would you close your eyes if you were to see the web content in your mother tongue?

I suspect there is a very close association between the language, the culture, and the spiritualism of any region on Earth. And a link between them is not easy to do away with.

I feel that good content in local languages is the real opportunity of today.

Well said. I think people are going to be very excited and enthusiastic about seeing the entire worldwide internet move towards allowing website names in native languages. The publicity that idn.idn will generate is going to be enormous news, and .com, .net etc will ride the wave.

[Rubber Duck]

My surf board is waiting right there in the lobby. :D

[kartik786]

Its been long since I visited this place and seems nothing has changed yet :P

I'm seeing people drop generic .co.in and .in domains , let alone thousands lll.in .co.in ones.

.in and .co.in is where I am at ;) .. IDN's can take some rest for now.

[Wot]

Its been long since I visited this place and seems nothing has changed yet :P

I'm seeing people drop generic .co.in and .in domains , let alone thousands lll.in .co.in ones.

.in and .co.in is where I am at ;) .. IDN's can take some rest for now.

Of the xxxx names I have by far the best traffic/sales comes from ascii.co.in, does not mean it will not change sometime in the future.

Yes- I have also picked up a few dropped .co.in/.in goodies. :)

[catchnames]

I don't think report has done right sampling. Number of websites is much more.

[Rubber Duck]

I don't think report has done right sampling. Number of websites is much more.

Well it is not really safe to travel onto the reservations at night when people are online with all this swine fever around. Most of these Indians live in pretty remote parts of the USA.

[phio]

Well it is not really safe to travel onto the reservations at night when people are online with all this swine fever around. Most of these Indians live in pretty remote parts of the USA.

"Native Americans"

[Rubber Duck]

"Native Americans"

Yes, if you are going to be so politically correct, why don't you use terms that are native? Both of these are imported from Europe. Real respect would involve terms that originate from within the culture.

I hope, however, that everyone here understands that it is the ignorance of cultures I was attacking rather than the cultures themselves.

[phio]

I hope, however, that everyone here understands that it is the ignorance of cultures I was attacking rather than the cultures themselves.

Yep, and as far as Hindi usage goes, all the IT guys read Hindi websites at the office instead of working. Of course the Project Managers have no idea what they are reading about. Usually it's just local news...;)

[bwhhisc]

Yep, and as far as Hindi usage goes, all the IT guys read Hindi websites at the office instead of working. Of course the Project Managers have no idea what they are reading about. Usually it's just local news...;)

Did you tell them that there are "only" 713 Hindi websites in the entire world! :lol: