24 August 2009

Yahoo! Finance leaves Google far behind

Google may be the undisputed leader of the search engine market, but new evidence reveals that it still falls down to competitor Yahoo! when it comes to financial news.

The New York Times reports that internet users searching for financial information are 17.5 times more likely to visit Yahoo! Finance than the Google alternative.

Yahoo! Finance has held the top spot in its field for 19 consecutive months, and boasted 21.7 million unique visitors from the United States in July, compared to only 1.2 million visiting direct competitor Google Finance in the same month. Google's service only arrived in 17th place in the category.

Yahoo! cites the visual simplicity of its finance service as a key reason for this user preference. Vice president of Yahoo!'s audience group, James Pitaro explains: "In our research with users, we found that the more information that was displayed on the page, the greater the anxiety."

Mr Pitaro reveals that the user-friendly design of Yahoo! Finance was inspired by "the Apple model," defined as: "simplicity in design; a clean, simple look, not overburdening our users with too much information on the page."

The Yahoo! Finance home page is conveniently categorised for ease of use and illustrates stories with video content, unlike Google's model, launched in 2006, which presents users with a variety of data and charts.

Yahoo! Finance also benefits by featuring unique news stories, currently at 5 per cent but looking to increase to 10 per cent original content to match up to the Yahoo! Sports news service. The finance section is also clearly signposted from the Yahoo! home page, whereas the more elusive Google Finance can only be accessed through clicking the 'More' tab on the Google start page.

It seems unlikely that Google will adopt the more successful model of its competitor and some-time collaborator Yahoo!, preferring to offer an abundance of information to visitors including real-time price quotations obtained from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq as opposed to Yahoo!'s more "human" touch of videos and articles.