State of the Indian Blogosphere in 2025: our sundry observations

Let us start with defining ‘blog’ and ‘blogosphere’ since their meanings have changed a lot in the last one and a half decade since the first blog took birth. 

What is ‘a blog’ and ‘the blogosphere’ in 2025?

These days, people often refer to all types of regularly updated content as ‘blog’. 
We also hear the following types of expressions from social media practitioners and influencers, something not associated with traditional 'blogging': 1. "On her Facebook blog, she narrates how she escaped unhurt in a serious road accident." 2. "He has a fashion channel on YouTube, but he puts his personal videos on his blog on YouTube."
In the present discussion, we would rather stick to the traditional definition of blogging: regularly updating web content. Within this, we would limit ourselves to blogs that are 'text+' websites: websites that have text as the base, with or without images, audio, and video as supplementary content. 
Further, since it is difficult to measure or comprehensively examine 'blogs' maintained within social platforms (Facebook, X/ Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.), we shall include, in ‘the blogosphere’, only standalone websites/ blogs, subdomains of blogging platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress, and blog-like sections of portals. 

What does the Indian blogosphere look like in 2025, as compared to earlier years?

Back to our observations. 
By 2025, the Indian blogosphere has matured to the extent that there are very few changes in its composition as compared to the last 5 years or so. In other words, the changes are now mostly incremental, except for the way the content is being created. 
Yes, we have seen many blogs in which the content is generated using AI, but that only changes the method or tool of producing content, not blogging per se. 
In recent years, the internet has reached every corner of the country, every home, and every hand. Social media and UPI (India's popular digital payment system) are ensuring that people of nearly all ages, languages, professions, and educational and economic status are glued to their mobile phones throughout the day. 
Not English, it is the local languages, led by Hindi, in which content is generated and consumed in India. Over 60% of internet users engage with content in regional languages, and this trend is growing.
We talked earlier about the 'maturity' of the Indian blogosphere. Let's dwell on it a bit more.
Please recall that blogging started with keeping a diary of events or information. Over time, it became a strong medium of communication and was once even touted as a strong competitor to mainstream media - newspapers, magazines, radio and television. It was a new medium in which the content was not moderated by an Editor and people could engage with the content by making comments. It looked as if the media had come in the hands of the common man and would control information, which was being controlled so far by big media houses and governments. 
However, social networking platforms, starting with Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, and Myspace, and now dominated by Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X/ Twitter, etc., took the role, and traditional blogging declined. 
At the same time, people started seeing blogging as a good way to monetize content. Blogging also came to play a role in business marketing. Individuals started using affiliation, reviews, advice and information, especially in some niches such as travel, cooking, finance and fashion for making money out of blogging. Some other ways blogs were/ are monetized include selling one's products, tutorials, brand collaboration, and AdSense advertisements. 
Yet, as late as 2019, the Indian blogosphere was dominated by blogs for expression and free information-sharing rather than monetization (You may like to see our observations of the Indian blogosphere in 2019, linked at the end of this section.)
In the present phase, the number of personal blogs seems to have stabilized, having found a bottom. The urge to express still draws people to this medium, especially in literature and in local languages. 
People wanting to purvey serious stuff, which is more permanent than the fleeting social network posts, maintain blogs. Professionals also maintain blogs on platforms where these add to their brand value, e.g. on LinkedIn. 
Besides individuals, NGOs and activists continue to maintain blogs. 
Corporates wanting to show their soft side and be seen as thought leaders maintain good blogs. Print media houses maintain blogs, which, in most cases, have articles written by their columnists or regular contributors.   
The professionalization of blogging has made blogs more efficient in the delivery of messages. While personal bloggers on free blogging platforms have limited design choices and do not care much for design and functionality, professional bloggers have well-designed blogs, and SEO is an integral part of their blogging work. Some of them also have interactive elements. 
Although only a few, one category of blogs is maintained in a highly professional manner. They excel not only in design, functionality, communication, and marketing of content, but also in the quality of content and a high degree of editorial oversight. 
Since the boundaries between blogging, social networking, and influencer-driven content have blurred, the same person or organization is often active on many platforms. While most individual bloggers seem to exhaust their energy in multiple channels, professional content creators and influencers are able to leverage this mix of platforms. Many of them make their blog the hub of information that feeds their activities on social networks, image and video sharing platforms, live shows, email outreach, and other means of social/ online broadcasting.
The urge to make money at the expense of everything else has made many blogs too commercial, devoid of the blogging spirit. They carry copy-pasted or SEO-optimized content with no real value for the reader. Their blogs are full of advertisements and pop-ups. They quietly push affiliate content or advertisements in the garb of genuine advice. In short, they want to earn money by way of marketing gimmicks, however shabby the blog may become. 
When it comes to content, while most blogs are still composed by humans, and with seriousness, a crop of news and information vendors has started dominating the blogosphere in terms of the quantity of content being generated. These are mostly news and information vendors. They update their content many times in a day, often with news bits or quick reviews of gadgets, devoid of serious thought. A few such popular 'blogs' are automatic information aggregators. 
The new trend of posting AI-generated content is likely to make the content on the blogosphere repetitive, copy-pasted, and even soulless. For Indian Top Blogs blog, we receive dozens of guest posting offers in a month, and it is not difficult to find out that most of their content is AI-generated.
You might like to see some of our earlier observations on the Indian blogging scene, here:
2011 survey of Indian blogosphere
Indian blogging scene in 2017
2019 observations on Indian blogosphere 
2023 observations on Indian blogging

Practical tips on improving your blog

In this second segment, we would like to share such specific observations on Indian English blogs as would help bloggers improve their blogging in different aspects, ranging from content to design and monetization.
1.  If you are an individual blogger who thinks that you have something meaningful to contribute to your area of activity, you should focus on regularly publishing posts on your blog. Over a period of time, it will help you to be seen as a thought-leader and expert in that field. Once you have that credibility, people will come to your blog to listen to you and accept your suggestions in real life too.  
2. Many businesses maintain a blog, but very few make the best use of it. Calling a part of the website a blog and posting just financial reports there is an extremely inefficient use of a high-value web asset. If you own a business of any type and maintain a website, you will find many ways to harness the potential of blogging.    
How about making it a hub of your social media activities? Or, making it a bubbling communication and feedback platform for either your employees or customers? Or, showcasing your best assets and achievements to influence your potential clients? 
3. Many big blogs and news magazines update their website many times a day or a week. Naturally, their more important content gets lost in the crowd. Such websites/ blogs should have one or more prominently-displayed sections tagging 'featured posts' from the blog.  
4. The majority of educational institutions now have their apps or portals with tools for teaching, evaluation, event planning, internal communication, and so on. They have bulletin boards and blog-like platforms for interaction, self-expression, broadcast, etc. 
When we looked into the portals of many institutions of higher learning, we did not find a buzzing blog in any of them. We would advise such institutes to consider having a blog that displays the best intellectual side of the institution as well as its achievements. 
We also found that academic/ educational institutes give prominence to various in-campus, academic, and research activities, but publishing an excellent piece on the blog hardly gets any public mention, forget a show-worthy award.
5. If you look at travel websites, you will see either no blog or a static collection of articles, which they call a blog. We feel that a blog, especially in niches such as travel, must be regularly updated because such websites need to constantly communicate with their existing clients (more so, because travel businesses usually have returning clients) and also the prospective ones. If you maintain a blog, think of having well-composed posts on different aspects of travel planning, different locations, new offers, latest facilities, etc. on your blog.
6. On the contrary, in some cases, we find a rather buzzing blog as part of a website, but the blog seems to be maintained by a public relations team that can't look beyond the textbook PR. There is hardly any genuine expression of ideas, experiences, or other forms of creativity, or an urge to serve or help, or a concern for customers' issues. They believe in posting cheap PR on the blog, which is counter-productive. 
7. Newspapers or news magazines have regularly updated columns, which, when available online, act as blogs. In fact, being written by experts and public figures, they are well-written and valuable. We have tried to include such columns from the Indian media in the Directory of Indian Blogs when these were freely accessible (not behind a paywall). However, not all media entities care for blogging; we reckon they are not making use of a very important section, for which they don’t have to work hard as their columnists, reporters, editors, etc already write for the paper/ magazine. 
8. We earlier shared that we find a number of organizations maintaining their blog as the depository or hub of knowledge, ideas, experiences, and creativity for use on other social media platforms. Some progressive businesses and institutions have been using their blog section to enhance their thought-leadership and communicate beyond their immediate business interests. 9. Talking of examples of good use of blogs, during the compilation of the latest  Indian blog listing, we found some hospital websites with superbly maintained blogs. Their doctors have been giving medical advice, there also are articles nicely explaining medical subjects, e.g., new types of diagnostic tools and the working of organs when a disease develops. They also give the latest developments in various fields of medicine. You will agree that this must be helping those hospitals in a big way, in the long run, though in an invisible manner. 
10. We find some very good as well as very bad examples of blogs in the food/ cooking field. Unless a blog deals with a very specific area, the food and cooking niche has numerous shades depending upon region, season, time of eating, taste, base ingredients, and what not. 
We find that most bloggers make a mess out of their content, and look confused about categorising their items and what should come on top. On the other hand, a few bloggers - including those on free blogging platforms - have made their blogs highly functional. (We shall shortly talk about this aspect of blogging.) 
11. Book review blogs in India (and elsewhere) began as hobby blogs. Some bloggers opened their blogs just for the sake of earning quick and easy money, by copy-pasting content from others. However, this niche has matured of late. We find some excellent Indian book review blogs, which are rich in content, regularly updated, and with a decent design. If you are a book blogger, try to give original insights so that readers flock to you when they look for a good read next time. 
You may like to visit these articles on why and how businesses should do blogging: 
Why should businesses blog?
Is blog part of your omnichannel strategy?
Business blogging: should CEOs maintain blog?
Studies show that businesses gain enormously from blogging!
That takes us to the observations on design and navigation aspects of Indian blogging in English.

Navigation is one of the most important parts of website and blog design.

12. We found that in designing the blog, professional bloggers often try to showcase everything on the homepage, in turn, cluttering it. The visitor is likely to get confused about many things about the blog - its content, expertise, etc. If he does not easily find what he is looking for, he can leave the blog in frustration.
To keep the design simple, we published this post long ago. Though old, its logic remains relevant even with the latest web design trends: Website and blog design: best sites are clean and simple
Keep the blog design simple and functional. Remove clutter by grouping things, drop-down menus, or other design tricks, even if you have many things to show. 
13. Many blogs do not have a way to access their archive. If it is due to the fear that people would steal their content or would unnecessarily go to past content that is not relevant anymore, the blogger might be wrong. An archive on the blog helps visitors explore more of the blog, which helps retain them longer on the blog. In addition, in some situations, it helps the technical SEO of the blog. 
If you are interested, you might like to visit this article on website and blog archiving basics.
14. The value of good navigation and cross-linking the blog with other parts of the website cannot be overemphasised in the case of business blogs. 
Let us give you an example of the website of a travel company based in NCR. As part of the website, it maintains a blog on which it posts 3-4 posts each month, and some of them are very good. However, unless you navigate page by page under the blog category, you are not likely to find them. And, you will agree, no visitor will take that bother. 
Then comes cross-linking the blog content elsewhere. For example, you maintain a travel blog on which there is a well-written personal experience of your client about her Nainital visit during October. Why not mention it below the booking segment, urging visitors to read this personal experience before they book a hotel? Why not give a link to this post where you have listed Indian hill stations? There can be numerous ways you can repurpose a well-written blog post - it becomes your prized asset that pays back again and again.  
15. On some blogs, especially on free blogs on the Blogger platform,  there is a long list of tags/ labels that runs into hundreds. Doing so hurts in many ways: It makes the blog look unprofessional and the blogger childish. It defeats the purpose of navigation. It takes up valuable space that could have been used for better purposes. 
In this article, we have discussed the value of tags/ labels and how to make the most out of them: Categories, labels and tags on websites or blogs: best practices
16.  We found that in some blogs, the thumbnails or featured images on posts are so big that they take up a big part of the screen. That makes navigation difficult, especially on small devices. It also restricts the number of entries that can be accommodated in one display, thus reducing the chance to showcase more matter in one go.  
17. On some blogs, the featured post takes up a lot of space. Worse, it does not change for weeks. The visitor, especially a new visitor, gets the impression that the shown one is the latest post and, finding it quite old, is tempted to leave the blog without exploring the rest of the content. 
You may like to visit this old post, which is as relevant as ever: Best blog design is one that shows your best content on top
18. Some blogs carry too many pop-ups, either together or one after the other. Sometimes the pop-up is quite big and comes with a hidden 'close' icon - these are sure ways to irritate the visitor. Generally, pop-ups should be limited to one or two, and they should come after some time or at the end unless they offer something free to the visitor (a giveaway, information, or advice that the visitors should not miss, etc.) 
19. In some blogs, navigation changes between the home page and other pages, making it confusing. We found it on some blogs using Wordpress templates. 
Keep the design not only simple but also uniform. That makes navigation intuitive and comfortable. 
In your itch to make your design full of the latest funky elements, do not test the visitor's intelligence or patience. Remember, navigation is not a quiz; it is just the opposite.
There are many more things to share. However, since the post has become too long, allow us to stop here.