#1 on the counting day

When millions of Indians across the world Googled to find out updated news on the 2009 Lok Sabha elections on May 16, most of them went to one site for the latest news—Aaj Tak, which belongs to India Today Group, which is also the publisher of Business Today.

According to Google Hot Trends India, Aaj Tak was the secondmost searched keyword after “Elections 2009” throughout the day. The top 100 keywords for the day also featured variants of the Aaj Tak keyword four times aaj tak, aajtak news, ajtak and aajtak tv live.

Aaj Tak was the second most searched keyword on May 16 Each visitor spent an average 14 minutes on the website

“When it comes to hard news and breaking news, Aaj Tak is the first choice, regardless of medium. It reaffirms our leadership position over the last decade,” India Today Group Editor-in-Chief, Aroon Purie, said, commenting on the trend.

The Aaj Tak (www.aajtak.in) website carried real-time trends and results at the constituency level for the 543 Lok Sabha seats. It also carried an updated account of the Assembly elections counting in three states which took place simultaneously. Interestingly, each visitor spent an average of 14 minutes on the website, a number considered very high in the Internet space. The unprecedented traffic on the Aaj Tak website also resulted in several servers crashing.