A war is on for the largest share of eyeballs of the 10-million-odd online job seekers which, in turn, bolsters online advertising rates on job portals such as Naukri.com, Timesjobs.com and Monster.com.

The Times group job site, Timesjobs.com, yesterday said it was the largest recruitment portal with 3.073 million active resumes.

Reacting to it, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, promoter of Naukri.com, said in a media statement: "As per Alexa and Comscore, Naukri.com remains by far the leading job site in India. According to Comscore, Naukri.com got more than 2.3 million unique users in February as compared to slightly more than 1.3 million of Timesjobs.com."

"The statistic that Timesjobs is referring to is "active" resumes in the last six months. Here Timesjobs.com has a different definition of "active" compared with Naukri.com. In Timesjobs if you open a job alert e-mail and click on a job in the email to go to the site you are treated as an active user. In Naukri.com, you are an active user only if you update your CV or apply for a job or are a new registrant," he added.

Timesjobs.com officials could not be reached for comments. Arun Tadanki, President & Managing Director, Asia, Monster.com, refused to comment on the issue.

As the claims go back and forth, the fact remains that e-recruitment provides the job seekers an easy means of submitting resumes rather than running around to offices.

The number of online job seekers was expected to cross 9.2 million last year (2006-07), according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) survey. It also gives the recruiters a wide variety to talent to choose from. Online job search is one of the top 5 online activities that Indians indulge in on the Internet.