Seeking Alpha is widely read by money managers, sell-side analysts, investment bankers, financial advisors, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and sophisticated retail investors. After conducting a detailed comparison of Seeking Alpha's audience to that of the other major finance sites (Bloomberg.com, Barrons, WSJ.com, MarketWatch, TheStreet.com, FT.com, CNN Money, BusinessWeek Online, Yahoo! Finance and Forbes.com), Nielsen found that SA has a remarkable readership:

Investment professionals and decision makers

Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of financial professionals (13.9%) of any major finance website. A significantly higher percentage of SA readers are decision makers or "influencers" for the purchase of financial services (13.8%) than for any other major finance website. (The closest second is WSJ.com with 9.8%.) And SA has the highest proportion of readers who are purchasers of online financial services for their own business, at 9.2%. (The closest second is Barron's with 3.6%.) We think our non-professional readers also influence financial decisions: Nielsen found that over 50% of SA's readers provide frequent advice about financial information. (The closest second is Barron's, with 28.3%.)

Highly active investors

Over 52% of Seeking Alpha readers bought stocks in the trailing 30 days -- double the closest second (TheStreet.com, at just over 26%). Similarly, a higher percentage of SA readers are active purchasers of stock mutual funds, money market mutual funds and bond mutual funds than readers of any other site. That's not surprising, given that a higher proportion of Seeking Alpha readers have large portfolios: SA has the highest percentage of readers with portfolios over $50,000, $100,000, $250,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000. A higher proportion of Seeking Alpha readers own securities - 86.5%. (The closest second is TheStreet.com with 83.4%.) Seeking Alpha has the highest readership percentage owning stocks (excluding their own company's), mutual funds, corporate bonds, and US Treasurys. And SA has the highest readership percentage with a brokerage account - both the highest percentage with an online brokerage account and the highest percentage of readers with an offline brokerage account - and with a self-directed IRA.

Business leaders, senior managers and entrepreneurs

Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of senior management (17.6%) of any major finance website. (The closest second is WSJ.com with 15.8%.) It has the highest percentage of C-Level executives. Seeking Alpha readers are highly entrepreneurial: Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of business owners, and the highest percentage of readers who work in a small business, by any measure (fewer than 10, 50, 100, 500 or 1,000 in their organization).

Highly educated

A higher percentage of Seeking Alpha readers have graduate or post graduate degrees -- 77.2% -- than any other major finance website. 44.2% of Seeking Alpha readers have post-graduate degrees.

Off-the-charts influential

Seeking Alpha's readers are highly influential in making business purchase decisions or influencing others. For example, Seeking Alpha has a higher proportion of Business Purchase Decision Makers or Influencers than any other major finance website for all of the following categories: ASPs, Internet access and site hosting; wireless/mobile; business consulting services; internet and e-business services; commercial real estate services; and software infrastructure.

This influence is mirrored by actual buying behavior. For example, in the last six months, Seeking Alpha has the highest proportion of its readers purchasing the following than any other major finance website: office supplies; computer hardware; computer software; printers; telephone equipment; telecom services; IT consulting services; travel services; business furniture; and marketing services. We were even surprised to find that Seeking Alpha's readership leads in the purchase of raw materials and construction equipment.

If you read the comments on SA, you'll see that our readers are definitely opinionated. So perhaps it's not surprising that SA even comes top in the percentage of its readers who provide frequent advice about politics & current events, books, websites, travel, computer hardware and software, electronics, online shopping -- and even bars & restaurants, dieting, and dating!

Why do they read Seeking Alpha?

• Money Managers and the Sell-Side. Seeking Alpha is an important research tool for money managers, sell-side sales professionals and research analysts. When you type a stock symbol into the search box at the top of any page on Seeking Alpha, we aim to provide: (1) a range of well-argued opinions about the stock by money managers, newsletters, industry experts and selected bloggers; (2) annotated summaries of important news stories about the stock ; (3) transcripts of the company's most recent conference calls; (4) coverage of competitors who may have filed IPOs recently; and (5) charts showing the stock's comparative performance and valuation to others in its sector. Many money managers also subscribe to Seeking Alpha articles by email. By signing up for our free email service, you can get articles about stocks in your portfolio and on your watch list automatically sent to you. Our daily Wall Street Breakfast is also immensely popular with money managers.
• Investment Bankers. Seeking Alpha provides deep and broad coverage of new IPO filings and has a section devoted to M&A. Many investement bankers also subscribe by email to articles about their clients' stocks and sectors.
• Industry Executives. Because of the depth of our coverage and its arrangement by sector, Seeking Alpha is an important resource for managers and entrepreneurs to follow and analyze developments in their industry. Thousands of participants in the Internet industry, for example, follow our coverage of Internet stocks due to the richness of information including conference call transcripts of almost every publicly-traded Internet company, coverage of smaller companies, and comprehensiveness. Most of these readers access our industry-specific content in one of three ways: bookmarking the relevant industry section of the Seeking Alpha site, subscribing to the RSS feed for that sector, or signing up to receive sector-related articles by email.
• Individual Investors. Seeking Alpha provides opinion and analysis, not just news. Many individual investors subscribe by email to articles about stocks in their portfolio, and regularly read our coverage of sectors they are interested in, such as gold or alternative energy. Two broader areas are also particularly popular with individual investors: our coverage of exchange-traded funds [ETFs] and our discussion of the overall market.