Finance Website Visits Increase 19% in February

As anxious Americans continue to fret about their financial portfolios, the number of US visits to the Stocks and Shares category of websites rose 19% in February 2009 compared with the same period last year, according to data from Hitwise, which said the category accounted for 1.11% of all US internet visits during the month.

The February rankings represent the third-highest month for the category in the past year, behind October and September 2008. The average time spent within the category was 11 minutes and 24 seconds, an increase of 14% over February 2008, Hitwise reported.

Yahoo Finance Top Visited Site

In February 2009, Yahoo (YHOO) Finance was the top-visited website in the category, with 22.21%. MSN (MSFT) Money received the second-highest number of visits (7.32%), followed by CNN Money (7.16%).

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Branded Sites Most Popular

Among the top 300 search terms sending traffic to the Stocks and Shares category, 64% were for branded terms in February 2009, Hitwise said. Stock searches made up 20%, and generic searches made up 16%. The majority of searches within the Stocks and Shares category are navigational, where internet visitors simply are searching on the brand name of their desired destination.

Sirius Radio Most Searched Stock

Among the search terms in the Stocks and Shares category in February 2009, Sirius XM (SIRI) was the top-searched stock amid talk of potential bankruptcy filing. Bank of America (BAC), General Electric (GE), Pure Spectrum (PSPM) and Cross Atlantic Commodities (CXAC) round out the top-five search terms for the month. The top generic financial search terms were “currency converter,” “gold price,” “gold prices,” “exchange rates” and “gold.”

“With recent declines in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, consumers are increasingly turning to websites to monitor financial news and portfolio performance,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research for Hitwise. “There is a strong need for continuous information, particularly during economic uncertainty, especially advice that could help customers weather the storm.”

About the data: The search term data is based on the volume of all US searches for the four weeks ending February 28, 2009, resulting in traffic to the Stocks and Shares category from the Hitwise sample of 10 million users.

Comments

[Tradememe:]

I believe this increase in traffic is true across the whole spectrum of financial websites and not just the branded ones. And I am quite sure that Seeking Alpha has also seen a substantial increase in traffic. But the problem is that the advertisers of these financial websites are being trounced in the crisis.

Mar 20 09:20 AM

[The Useful ...:]

Well, at this time of year there is always increase in traffic for any finance related websites. I see this on my own website:

www.theusefulinfo.com

One of the major reason for this tax filing season between Jan to Apr.

Mar 20 03:43 PM

[JayWizzle:]

I use the website sponsoredgooglelinks.w... for advice on google advertising and now i get 14,000 visits a month. I pay a set fee of only $99 a month. People using pay per clicks are crazy

Apr 16 08:47 PM