In spite of having made an outstanding image in the field of search engine as a repository of information, Google’s technology seems somewhat lagging behind its rival like Yahoo.
According to comscore Media Metrix reports, when it comes to serving financial news and information, Yahoo draws 17.5 times traffic of Google, and Yahoo Finance occupying the top position for consecutive 19 months.
Google Finance drew only 1.2 million unique visitors while the figure is 21.7 million for Yahoo Finance.
James Pitaro, vice President of Yahoo’s audience group, said, “In our research with users, we found that the more information that was displayed on the page, the greater the anxiety.”
Yahoo adopted “the Apple model — simplicity in design; a clean, simple look, not overburdening our users with too much information on the page.” While Google do not seems to pay attention to these details.
Yahoo Finance is organized into sections: investing; news and opinion; personal finance; customized portfolio tracking; and “Tech Ticker,”
When we click on a link to a news story accompanied by a Tech Ticker video, it starts automatically and gives a warm human presence on the page. The video player is on one side of the page and is stationary; the visitor scrolls down on the other side to read news articles. It provides a multitasking feel. Mr. Pitaro said, “We have a great relationship with the front-page team to identify topics we should cover,”
Google does not use the mostly empty home page to let visitors know that it has a finance site — some may not even know it exists. (To reach it, a user must click on the word “more” at the top of the home page.) But Google’s finance site offers something rather basic that Yahoo doesn’t: free real-time price quotations obtained directly from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Compared to the total US traffic on all Google sites with the total on all of Yahoo’s, Google edged past Yahoo last year to take the overall lead. Since then, Google has stayed on top, though with only a slim advantage, according to comScore. So finance is an important category that allows Yahoo to remain neck-and-neck with Google over all.
Yahoo understands that a free finance site prospers by drawing less from the world of mathematics and more from the world of entertainment, informing just enough to satisfy users without setting off an anxiety attack.
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