Will Google Finance Take Share From Yahoo Finance?

Google Finance, the investing website that has yet to make a real impact in the year since it was launched, has just gotten a major boost with an important change to Google’s main search results pages. Now when people search the main Google site for the name of a public company, they will see an option to preview stock information on the company from Google Finance.

Previously, finance information was mostly only included in search results when people searched for a ticker symbol. The change, which places the stock information is an expandable “PlusBox”, was announced on the Official Google Blog.

Could boost traffic to Google Finance

According to Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, Google Finance had a less than 1% share of the business and finance category in December, shortly after the site was upgraded with new features. By comparison, category giant Yahoo! Finance had over 50 times more traffic with a 37% share.

However, the change in how Google treats searches for listed company names could substantially boost traffic to Google Finance and therefore increase its importance as a source of information for investors.

Now when Google users search for companies by name, they will see a PlusBox link that expands to show Google Finance content. See below.

The above screenshot shows the expanded view. By clicking on the stock chart or the “More information about MAT” link, users will go to the Google Finance page for the company.

Extra click may slow traffic flow

While a boost in traffic to Google Finance from the main Google search pages is obvious, it’s unclear just how much more traffic we’re talking about. This is because instead of going directly to Google Finance when they click on the stock quote links, web users are given a preview without leaving the main Google search results page.

They have to click on a second link or on the stock chart to go through to the Google Finance page for the company. The extra click could cut the amount of traffic that goes through to Google Finance pages.

This differs from how Yahoo! handles searches for listed company names. It provides direct access to its Yahoo! Finance profile pages for companies via a hyperlinked ticker symbol next to the company’s name in its search results.

I’m not sure I like Google’s approach because it breaks a long-established convention on the Web — that when you click on a link, you can expect go to a new webpage.

But that doesn’t happen in this case. Instead, new content appears in the current page. Given Google’s popularity, it may be big enough to rewrite convention if it wants to. We’ll have to wait and see.

Of one thing you can be sure, though. If your stock is listed on a U.S. exchange, anyone searching for your company by name is going to have its stock price thrust in front of them much more prominently than before.

You just got some free advertising on the world’s most popular website!

Note: I used Mattel as an example for no specific reason. It happened to be on my mind at the time. I have two youngsters who have a keen interest in the company’s goods.

Comments

[DavidJackson]

Interesting. Taking this one step further: AJAX-expandable boxes may have huge potential for Google to add all sorts of things to search results pages, including video and ultimately expandable ads. Imagine if you could click on an ad on a search page and it expanded to a larger window with more info in it.

Barry Schwartz says there are plans for a video plus box.

[rcolema3]

I think Google needs to expand into the social networking sites (like FeedTheBull) and buy one of those sites to get some more traffic to their site. More and more, people are comign to expect that social interaction on websites, and that will give Google an edge over Yahoo!Finance.

[James Cullen]

If Google really wanted to play hardball with dueling finance websites, they would have one of their many genius developers filter the search code so a Google search for, say, "RIMM" wouldn't give you results from Yahoo Finance.
I use Yahoo Finance, and although I thought Google had something going with their new charts, Yahoo went and matched it and rolled out their own interactive charts. Credit Yahoo with actually doing something right for once, even if it was completely copying Google.

[Rob Sanheim]

James: I think explicitly filtering competing results would be stepping way over the line of what constitutes "do no evil" for Google. They still maintain that they provide the best, fairest results, even if that means ranking competing results above what they offer.

[James Cullen]

I think "do no evil" is going to be brushed under the rug in favor of "do not miss consensus EPS targets".

As wonderful as it would be to see a large company stand on principle and admit when its own product isn't as good as a competitor's, I'm going to remain skeptical and assume that Google Finance will eventually supercede Yahoo Finance on Google search results, even if everyone continues to prefer Yahoo.