Yahoo beats Google in finances

Although when it was launched in March it drew a lot of attention, Google Finance has not yet come to surpass Yahoo Finance or MSN, according to Hitwise. The statistics show that Yahoo is the leader in Web-finance domain with 34.9 percent share of the market, as of the week ending June 10, 2006. The second place is taken by MSN Money Central, with 13.67 percent while the third place goes to CNN Money, which holds 4.50 percent share.

Google is situated on a disappointing 38 place for the week ending June 10, with only 0.10 percent of the total finance searches. Hitwise included more than 900 sites for its investigation report (to be exact, 988).

Bill Tancer, Hitwise’s general manager stated that :”Google Finance has good utilities, including charting. It also has a very clean user interface. But these features are not enough to capture market share in personal finance Web sites.”

Tancer added that the key reason for which Google Finance is staying behind its rivals is that personal finance Web sites like Yahoo Finance are quite attractive and create a sort of dependence. “They allow users to personalize their stock and news preferences,” he said. “It is hard for users to enter all the information again, and that is going to be the impediment to growing in the personal finance category. It is more difficult to gain share in the personal finance category than in other Web site categories.”

The same analyst mentioned the other motive for Google’s lack of finance (not financial) success: Google has not yet leveraged Google Finance’s content among its other Web site properties. “For example, it is not easy to bridge Google’s personalized home page to Google’s financial information page,” he said. “By comparison, this functionality is easier and seamless on Yahoo. The same argument holds for MSN.”

Which personal finance site is your favorite?