AOL released a much needed improvement to their Finance site last November at beta.finance.aol.com. At the time, the site was the third largest money and finance site after Yahoo Finance and MSN Money.
December Comscore data is now available, and it shows a steep rise in traffic for AOL Finance. They’ve passed both Yahoo and Microsoft to take the top spot in terms of unique visitors. AOL rose from 12.2 million unique visitors in November to 13.5 million in December, a 10% increase. Meanwhile Yahoo dipped from 13.7 to 13.2 million unique visitors, and MSN Money dipped from 11.6 to 11 million visitors. The combined decrease in Yahoo’s and MSN’s audiences is almost equal to the gains by made by AOL.
AOL Finance also saw 335 million page views, slightly more than second place Yahoo Finance with 333 million. This is actually a slight drop from November, although that may be a good thing, too. Many of the changes allow users to get updated information without page refreshes, so page views are more efficient and users are happier.
If you are a heavy user of any of the major finance sites, let us know which one you think is best. But AOL seems to have made the right changes in their new beta. It will replace the existing site in the next six weeks or so.
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The beta.finance.aol.com link on the article is formulated badly, doesn’t work.
fixed it.
I use google finance, but I prefer Reuters for gathering information.
i use yahoo finance almost exclusively, sometimes i also use msn money. yahoo finance has the most comprehensive coverage on news, market, stock, option, and they have a very decent interactive flash charts, also the yahoo message board seems to have the most traffic among all big three web sites. yahoo also has some original contents lick expert columns which are worth reading sometime.
msn money has a few edges over yahoo, for instance, on msn money, you can graphically view the past few quarters of a company’s earning performance, like whether it beats the estimation or not, while on yahoo, you will have to digest many posts in “company news” section to see it. but msn money sucks in charts.
the new features on the site are very usefull.
That’s unbelievable. Yahoo! Finance has been here for yeaaarrrrrzzzzz, and banm comscore show AOL finance on top…. that’s un-f*-believable.
But hey!
http://www.givemebeats.com
I kinda like it better than yahoo though!
http://www.givemebeats.com
Y! is best in breed. Anyone who is serious about finance will almost assuredly agree.
I use Google Finance, but I can understand why many folks don’t — it doesn’t offer enough. My next choice would be Y! to get me all the articles I need. I tested AOL Finance’s Beta site out when you first posted about it, but I was a bit turned off but how absurdly long they made their homepage. I kept scrolling and scrolling… while that still remains, they looked like they’ve done a great job with the streaming quotes, layout, and use of ajax.
@4: I must disagree with you saying Y! has decent interactive flash charts. It’s way too heavy and I dread clicking on it. Also, with their interactive chart taking up the whole webpage, users are unable to see latest headlines…
I agree their message boards have the most traffic of the three, but still decent at best. Y! does stand out though — reminds of me of the whole john mackey fiasco.
bloomberg
I have to say that I agree that Y Finance just ruined their charts - I dread clicking on one. This comes a year after their ruined their message boards with a new UI.
AOL’s new site is pretty good. I will actually consider switching my portfolio. It’s all cming full circle because Finance was my first use of AOL “way back when”
Yahoo! is clearly the best!!
I’ve used Yahoo Finance for years and like Google Finance for certain things, but I’ll be sure to give AOL a fresh look. Thanks Michael.
I am very impressed with the new AOL beta site. I have not been a user to date but this would make me switch. Thanks for covering it as I have not heard about it elsewhere which is odd if they are now #1
looks interesting .
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http://www.xencasino.com
I am confused. if the AOL site is still in Beta and has not yet replaced the existing site then it seems pretty unlikely that the beta site is responsible for the traffic increase.
Frankly, Yahoo, MSN, AOl are all bubble gum finance sites.
I like Bloomberg, Morningstar, FT
I think, Yahoo! Always Best
AOL Money is taking over the space not because of their beta launch but rather because of their kickass coverage of the money and finance worlds as covered by things like BloggingStocks and WalletPop. That new beta launch is just a utility that gives users the reason to be habitual but it’s the great news and features that get folks in to the site. I see nothing but great things ahead for that business, regardless of any reduction in traffic from their increasingly less relevant portal lead generator.
miss me, mike? well, here’s another for ye… hehehe
there is no good finance site in existence… i’ll not give my vote to one for being “the best” because none of them are a bloomberg machine… be real, these sites are almost halfway fun for someone who is courting a minor interest in a stock or two they might own, but none of them are the least bit useful to anyone who is serious about money.
it cannot be pulled off by AOL, MS, Yahoo, or Google…
Google comes the closest to being an actual usable application, but as mentioned, they fall short on the content factor… all the data are there, they just have not wrapped in it in a consumable package, shame on them.
The best Finance site has yet to come… and when it does, it will be developed by a startup and acquired by the smartest of the those big 4 (most likely google or microsoft as AOL doesnt seem to have a checkbook and Yahoo likes to chew their food for way to long before swallowing… so obviously its MS or GOOG.)
Shame on TC for giving even a shred of praise to anything AOL has to excrete.
All the big finance sites are usable and attract a lot of traffic.
And the portals that have advertising are very profitable.
What I find interesting is that retail investors use these portal sites rather than their brokers sites.
Typically they maintain portfolios on the portal sites and use them heavily for market data and news.
And only go to the broker site to execute trades…
This is definitely and improvement for AOL, but I still like Google’s interface and charting a lot better. However, Yahoo! is still second to none when it comes to its content and message boards.
//AOL Money is taking over the space not because of their beta launch but rather because of their kickass coverage of the money and finance worlds as covered by things like BloggingStocks and WalletPop
Exactly! Which proves one more time that it is the talent and the content that drive the traffic. Only that an not some Web 2.0 voodoo.
As to the feature set, AOL Money site still (!!!!) doesn’t have Options quotes or Technical Analysis in their charts. Something Yahoo has had for like 10 years by now.
I use Y! and Google Finance, but i am really impressed with the plethora of information on beta.finance.aol.com. But when you say unique visitors, its not so uncommon to have more unique visitors for a beta site. May be we can better analyze the stats that are collected after the site went live.
it’s in beta alright. check out http://beta.finance.aol.com/ch.....c/ebay/nas. exactly how a beta product in this state make such a dramatic traffic difference, beats me.
the link above in #25 doesn’t work is supposed to bring you to their interactive chart. it doesn’t work, i guess you can only navigate to it. chart in this case (ebay) is busted. so is the one for yhoo.
I swear by Google finance, it stream lines research by becoming a killer app. without the overload of content and ads. I suggest it to every single people I talk about the market with, its sad that more people don’t realize how easy it is to use. AOL does have the strong hold on the market, because as people said earlier of owning Blogging Stocks and the unofficial apple blog etc. Google ’s interface is more user friendly.