India Today Group Online

New Delhi, 20 June 2000: Rediff.Com, which has been listed in the Nasdaq last week, has been adjudged the best Indian website by an independent site that ranks Indian websites. Bestindiansites.Com has ranked the Indian websites on the basis of time taken for loading of website, contents on site, design of the page, browser compatibility and so on.

According to the rankings, Rediff.Com, online since February 1997, has got the best index of 3.22. Rediff is followed by Expressindia.Com and 123india.Com, while Indiaexpress.Com and Indiatimes.Com are at the fourth and fifth spot respectively.

India-today.Com and Economic Times were on the top among the exclusive news portals, but with an overall ranking of eight and nine respectively. Rediff and Expressindia are the sites to get the best ranking index among the top 50 sites, said Simarprit Singh, Managing Director of Bestindiansites.Com. He said Bestindiansites.Com was in talks with some industry bodies and agencies for a tie-up to market the concept of ranking Indian sites and would be releasing monthly rankings for the benefit of Indian dotcom industry.

Among the B2B sites, Indiamart.Com was found to be best site with an overall ranking of seven and an index points of 14.75.

Among the content sites, Mapsofindia.Com was at the top with an overall ranking of six and Khel.Com was found to be the best Indian sports site. Bawarchi.Com was adjudged the best cooking site, Khoj.Com the best Indian search engine, Naukri.Com the best job site and Indiainfoline.Com the best finance portal. Bseindia.Com was found to be the best stock site, Dgreetings.Com the best greeting site and Indiaconnect.Com the best web hosting site. Indiagov.Org and Mantraonline also stood out among the government and IPS categories.

Indiatravelog.Com was selected the best among the travel sites, C2W.Com among contest sites, Indiafm.Com among music portals. One important feature in the ranking is that except Mapsofindia.Com, Digitalht and Satyamonline.Com, all the top 20 Indian sites are established by 1997 or earlier, proving that the dotcom business too takes a lot of time for establishing credentials.

While Mapsofindia.Com was established in 98 September, Digitalht went online in December 1998 and Satyamonline in June 1998.