Why Is Google Finance Failing To Catch On?
It’s been 21 months since Google Finance, Google’s financial news, information and stock price site was launched, and that ComScore chart above shows that it doesn’t really have any more users now than it did a year ago. Google’s that hot pink line at the bottom, representing 1.5 million monthly unique visits, well behind leader Yahoo’s roughly 38 million, MSN’s 20 million, AOL’s 12.2, and CNN Money’s 6.7 million.
Why does Google have so little upward movement that in the last 12 months, Yahoo has gained as many users as Google has in total, seven times over? Google may promote its own Finance product at the top of search results, but it also links to Yahoo, MSN, CNN, MarketWatch and Reuters, giving itself no more real space than the competition. Plus, the Finance chart it inserts on certain searches actually discourages users from seeking further information.
Universal Search is useful for users, but it doesn’t seem to do any good promoting other Google services. In the long run, it may have more value convincing users to stick with Google search than convincing them to switch away from search verticals that are extremely popular at Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else.
On a related note, it’s been just over a week since Google removed the Google Video link from its search link bar, and it gets more annoying every day. I really miss having an easy way to get video search results.
The chart’s via TechCrunch, which has a report on AOL Money and Finance’s new version, complete with Relegance deep news browsing integration, very powerful interactive Flash charts, and a return-on-investment table for multiple time periods. Michael doesn’t actually explain how to get it, so I’ll tell you to go to this page to check out the new beta experience, or check out this chart for GOOG.
