Indianexpress.com in 2018: The journey to 1,250,000,000 sessions

Our story is never about the numbers, it is always about the stories. And 2018 gave us enough stories to cheer, cry and think.

1,250,000,000

That is the number of sessions you readers spent on indianexpress.com in 2018, resulting in more than double the number of pageviews. This is why we have been consistently among the top three news websites in the country. But then our story is never about the numbers, it is always about the stories. And 2018 gave us enough stories to cheer, cry and think.

While there were many events of massive reader interest from important elections to the football World Cup, it was the passing away of three legends that gripped them the most. Our top read story was the news about Sridevi’s death, first confirmed by indianexpress.com. The story was read by millions of people within the first few hours and, with close to half a million shares, it is one of our most social stories ever. Similarly, the news of the deaths of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and M Karunanidhi were also read across the country, underlining the importance of the most influential political figures of our times.

The Karnataka elections and the prolonged drama that ensued was the biggest political story of the year, even more than Congress victories in three states towards the end of the year. Among events, the Kerala floods and the Amritsar train tragedy were among the top read.

While education stories, especially all the result announcements, understandably get a lot of readership, in sports the IPL auctions had millions of readers. Indian cricket team’s many wins also figure prominently in our list of top read stories.