Indian Search Engines : Who is winning the race ?

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India centric localized search engines market is saturating fast, real fast. In last year alone there must have been more than 10-15 Indian local search engines launched. Some smaller and some bigger. Some with huge funding and some with none. This space is so crowded right now that it is difficult to know who is really winning. However, I’ll attempt to put forth a brief overview of current scenario.

Before moving forward we should give some thought to following questions.

  • Is India having a market size to accommodate all of them ?
  • Are they different and unique enough from each other to command attention and traffic?
  • What are the sources of monetization for these search engines?
  • Is their search quality relevant enough to get the user move from their existing favorite search engines?

I am sure all new search engines that have launched will have answers to these questions; however, lets do some high level analysis ourselves.

Here are some of them who fall in the localized Indian search engine category.

Guruji, Justdial, Tolmolbol, burrp, Dwaar, onyomo, khoj, nirantar, bhramara, gladoo, lemmefind.in along with Ask Laila which launched a couple of days back. Also, you do have your localized versions of big giants Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Each of these Indian search engines have come forward with some or the other USP. It is too early to pass a judgment on any of them. These are testing stages and every start-up is adding new features and making their services better. Only time will tell who survives

However, let’s look at where each of them stand as of today. I tried to get Alexa figures for all of them. Although, Alexa figures cannot be depended upon, it is good for comparison, as the profiles of users searching will be similar for most of these search engines.

As per Alexa, Some search engines do not seem to get even few hundred hits a day; few of them however have some moderate amount of traffic coming in. Here are the top 5 based on the page views they get.

Indian Search Engine Traffic Statistics

Guruji was one of the first of these new generation localized search engines and they do seem to be getting some traffic. Last couple of months seems to be going pretty well for them.

Justdial cannot really be compared to others because they have a completely different model. Most of their users are the ones who have already used their phone services, which are actually quite a lot. Also, their search results are not based on crawlers. This is human gathered data, so it is near perfect. Your search will either lead you to exactly what you want or nothing. According to me, their online + brick & mortar model has most ingredients to be the winner.

burrp! is catering to a niche segment. They provide you search results pertaining to local food joints, caterers, bakeries and host of other food related businesses etc. They also have got a quite a bit of media coverage, and seem to be doing well in their niche.

Tolmolbol is more of a localized search portal catering to different segments and offering various services. I really cannot comment on them as yet, I guess it is too early for them to make any impact. They too have got a bit of coverage in blogosphere.

Dwaar is another generic Indian search engine in Guruji mold. I tried a search “Pune properties” as a sample and found quite a few relevant searches. So seems to hold some promise.

One interesting thing I have noticed is that in last 3 months, I have not received any traffic from any of these Top 5 search engines for any of the keywords, whereas I get few hundreds from local Indian versions of Google and yahoo every day. Don’t these crawlers like my blog or they have yet to find me :)

One Indian search Engine called lemmefind.in was the only search engine that has sent me some traffic. I would be interested to know the traffic other bloggers are receiving from them.

Are there any more search engines in Pipe line ? I hope not !

28 Comments
  1. Dishi Verma says

    ac repair service in secunderabad

  2. Siddharth Sinha says

    go for the http://www.patnapedia.com its the best and I never have seen before this type of search engine.. its the best.. thank you

  3. Nilo Raj says

    http://www.quikdial.info – local search engine in India , your can add your business , service , property for rent or sale , room for rent in your city.. http://quikdial.info

  4. Ritesh says

    i would like to tell u friends that before few days i my self experienced if you are talking about search engine companies then no one is best then Dial infoline 022-65 333 333
    it’s mumbai based company & before few days i met with an accident i gave call to
    just dial & some other few companies for ambulance service at 2:am at taloja navi mumbai.i was lying in the middle of road my brother was with me he gave call to
    dial infoline 022-65 333 333 for ambulance service within 15minutes ambulance was there in front of me they gave me reference that sir u had give call in dial infoline for ambulance service i said yes they immediately took me to nearest hospital when my treatment was over in hospital then i am receiving call from another 3/4 ambulance service provider who were saying that sir you had given call in just dial DNA i said that dude you guys & the company from which you received my msg they are really giving very slow service i already gave call in Dial infoline 022-65 333 333 & they had given me ambulance in 15mints that’s called a service so now being an indian citizen i will recommend to all of you Dial infoline.

  5. Dashrath says

    Good list of of local search engine, but which is the best, Please show here or tell me.

  6. Rashmi Arora says

    Search engine for searching MBA Colleges in India

  7. mallikarjun says

    I wish to have a pie chart of different web engine operating in India to know the statistics. It may also include engines originating from outside.

  8. Matt Riley says

    A lot of these guys are old. Dwaar for example is some bixee.com dribble now. Several of these are specific sites for food search and such. Guruji and JustDial remain the top Indian options. But the big boys at Google and Yahoo are in the house.

  9. Robert Britten says

    looks very interesting and could turn out to be very informative.

  10. vinod says

    Hi

    I found another local search site which is cool. It is called http://www.findnearyou.com and these guys are doing a great job with lists, community tools, events.

    they are currently offering their services in chennai, bangalore,hyderabad,delhi and mumbai

  11. Concord says

    well google is the boss of all search engines.Seraches say that 50% of the traffic comes due to google,25% yahoo and rest of all big and small search engines.
    So for a website its very imortant to be popular in google.
    http://www.concordsoftech.com

  12. Amit Mehta says

    hi i think these all local search engines are not so fast as google or yahoo. they should try in this field. http://www.unisoft-technologies.com/

  13. Amit Mehta says

    Hi all,
    these are nice list of local search engines, but which one is most popular in all these.

  14. Krishna says

    Checked a new concept of local search launched by a startup called Ubona. Currently it is for bangalore and you can call any restaurant of Bangalore by calling their number +91 4070 0000 and saying the name. It is cool. Their web address is http://www.ubona.com

  15. Praveen Rc says

    Hi, Nice Post, but I'm wondering how could you missed yellowpages.sulekha.com :(

  16. destination travels says

    Hi all ,

    Just check it out one more search engine that i have found … http://www.destinationtravels.in
    here you can also find any information for which you are looking for international tours,outbound tours,Beach Honeymoon ,Greek Islands ,Paris Hotels,Australia hotels ,Orlando Packages, Island vacations ,Bali packages ,Maldive Packages, Seychelle Packages,Canada tours,Tahiti hotels, Honeymoon packages, French Riviera tours, Luxury holidays, New Zealand tours,Beach Holidays, Beach Vacations,Canadian Rockies tour,Niagara Falls tour,London budget hotels. Italy packages,Outbound tour operators ,Greece tours. ,Europe packages,Bora Bora hotels.

  17. taj tour travels says

    Hi all ,

    Just check it out one more search engine that i have found … http://www.tajtourgara.com here you can also find any information for which you are looking inside India,all destinations in india,Forts & Palaces In India, Mughals Agra Tour ,Eco Tourism,Wildlife Adventure Tours, Pilgrimage of India,Khajuraho Temples, Spa and Nature Herbs,Kerala Backwater Tours ,Golden Beaches of Goa,Buddhist Circuits Of India, Golden Triangle Tours,Taj Mahal tour,Fatehpur Sikri Tour, North India Tour Packages,

  18. Nitin says

    Hi all ,

    Just check it out one more search engine that i have found … http://www.myquest.in here you can also find any information for which you are looking inside India …… I have found it when i was searching on Google ……

  19. Prasanth says

    Ho thats was a cool story…..

    I just feel so happy that u found guruji.com good
    that was a good story … keep the good work

  20. Girish says

    Yeh guys Just Check this local search on the Mobile http://wap.justdial.com or even if you log into http://www.justdial.com on your mobile it redirects you. It is really fast and cool.
    I heard about it from http://www.indianpad.com/story/86227

  21. verto says

    great work!
    thanks
    I like guuji. tolmolbol is also good for shopping………….

  22. mahi says

    Mahi

    Thanks Mahitha Indian Local Search Engine http://www.ilaka.in is the is way to find iformation. http://www.ilaka.in provides all the information about Banks,Shopping Malls,
    automobiles,jewlerys,ATM’s,Schools,Hotels,Route Maps each and every information
    people findout in http://www.ilaka.in

  23. Tech Thoughts says

    Great list of Indian Search Engines. Never knew that there are so many. Thanks.

    http://mgopinath.blogspot.com

  24. trakin says

    Rithesh,
    Yes, Tolmolbol is more of of city guide, but it falls under a the umbrella of “Localized Indian Search Engine”. I would say, any site that helps user to search what he wants in India falls under that category. AGain it may be for a particular city or a vertical like food in case of Burrp. I am glad that you are a regular reader of this blog. Moving forward you will see a lot more coverage on Indian start-ups and Web2.0 world.
    Indowatch,
    Ohh..I guess I missed out on that. I will keep Tolmol.com in mind for my future posts on Indian search engines, thanks for pointing out.
    Jobhunt, I am aware about Gladoo…It is more of an aggregator of Jobs. I dont know why they have missed out on an important feature, which I think in todays world is of paramount importance. RSS feeeds, Email alerts or other web2.0 features. Now a days most of the users want that. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I did not see any on the search results page. If it is somewhere else that it should be first on the search result page…
    Mesmerized…Very true. I had seen some videos on Just dial couple of months back. They have extremely strong Business strategy. There search is only a supplement to their phone services they offer. When I tried sample search, they were very impressive. As of now, I too think that JustDial is a great search engine.

  25. jobhunt says

    I’ve heard about Gladoo.com. I think it’s very different and great concept. I would recommend you all to checkout http://www.gladoo.com and see what is stored for you all there. I love that engine and specially its concept where it provides all the available jobs from different sites and companies on a single platform and name of the platform is gladoo.com. I really liked one of its feature ‘Career Canteen’. Enjoy…

  26. indowatch says

    thanks for sharing the info. Another new local search engine you missed to mention is TolMol.com – a local comparison shopping search engine.

  27. Mesmerized says

    I am an absolute addict to justdial.com, They are doing a great job. Whilst for my lifestyle search needs i think burrp does a great job, though their search results may not be great their interface is just stunning to use. I really like their looks and UI

  28. Rithesh Prasad says

    Trakin,

    Great post. I’m happy you’ve covered a whole lot of Indian products out there as that points to your depth of understanding of the market. And I’m also happy you mentioned tolmolbol too in the top 5 :)

    As you’ve rightly said, there is a USP with each product. In the case of tolmolbol, we are more of a city guide and help you connect with your neighbourhood. We don’t really crawl India-related webpages. Otherwise, we would have loved to link to your blog especially since I’m now an avid reader of your posts surrounding the Indian Business Buzz.

    Do send me an email if you’d like to get in touch or have any questions for us.

    Rithesh – tolmolbol.com

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