A comprehensive analysis and research report on surfing habits in India suggests that viewer base for sports especially cricket sites in the country has significantly grown over the last one year.

According to the findings by the renowned Internet research firm, comScore, nearly 10.4 million Internet users, of the estimated 37.2 million in all, invariably visited one sports site or the other in January 2010, in comparison to just about 5.2 million users in the corresponding month a year ago. The cumulative number of net users at home or at the office then was about 32.5 million.

Incidentally, comScore doesn’t monitor online habits and patterns of cyber café users as well as sites visited through handsets. But the report points to a broader trend. It reveals that the time spent and the page views in the sports websites have almost doubled. The latest data indicates that on an average, a sports lover spends about 30 minutes at a site, views 41 pages and visits any sports related sites around 6 times as compared to 29 minutes, 39 pages and 4 visits to sports category sites in January 2009.

No surprise that the cricket sites top the category in both January 2009 as well as 2010.  Yahoo! Cricket has grabbed the top spot among the sports websites. The website has garnered nearly 3.9 million unique visitors. It has logged a phenomenal growth of 305 per cent over January 2009. Cricinfo.com is ranked second with an estimated 3.5 million unique visitors. Sify Sports is another site in the category that has recorded a tremendous traffic growth. The website, ranked third, has grown by a whopping 379 per cent with nearly 1 million unique visitors, in comparison to 2 lakh visitors a year ago (January 2009).

Executive vice-president (Asia Pacific) of comScore, Will Hodgman states, “The sports site category has seen tremendous growth as more Indians are turning to the Internet as their prime source of updated news on their favorite teams and players.”