Though Yahoo Finance has earned its place as the top online financial site, Google’s version has several positives going for it that may be overlooked.
Google Finance A Rewarding Experience
Yahoo Finance does something very well. It presents access to a lot of stock information that the reader won’t find outside of an online subscription to the Wall Street Journal. In recent months they have coupled that with regular contributions from prominent columnists like Ben Stein.
Manoj Jasra at Web Analytics World found a few reasons to enjoy the Google Finance experience. Google’s product suffered from jaded disappointment expressed by some notable blogger types at launch, but even then the site seemed to have promise.
Jasra has picked up on some of the things to recommend a trip to Google Finance. The ad-free interface comes first in his list. No ads for online brokerages or yummy Pillsbury cookies, as he observed at Yahoo.
That big Ajax powered chart appearing on stock pages, and the daily data about a stock’s price, draw the visitor’s attention. Jasra appreciated seeing the most important information presented this prominently.
The presentation Google Finance uses places everything it has about a stock on a single web page. All the financials, executive info, and other details are there waiting to be scrolled. Yahoo’s model links to much of those details; personal preference will determine which approach is better.
When it comes to search, Jasra made a nice point about each site. Yahoo Finance search is much less noticeable than Yahoo’s general web search. Google’s big search box can’t be missed at the top of the page.
It may have been fashionable to dismiss Google Finance at launch (a viewpoint we disagreed with at the time), but it presents a lot of details about a stock in one place. It’s a valuable starting point for researching stock details online.
