GOOGLE FINANCE SHOWS STRONG DEBUT

Visit length on par with other finance sites

NEW YORK, March 30, 2006 – Last Tuesday, March 21, Google surprised its competitors with the beta launch of Google Finance, which compiles stock information and financial news. Just how will this new effort impact online financial information?

According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, Google Finance ranked at number 28 in the Business Information category for the week ending March 25, 2006, its first week online. Yahoo! Finance dominates the Business Information category, with 31.9 percent market share of category visits for that week. While Google Finance’s share was only a fraction of that at 0.53 percent, Google has done little to promote the site in its first week online.

Visit Length Increases as Users Grow Familiar with Google Finance

The average visit length for the Business Information category was 8 minutes 29 seconds for the week ending March 25, 2006, and while Google Finance’s average visit length was below this at 6 minutes 2 seconds, its session time lengthened during its second week online. On March 28, 2006 visitors stayed for an average of 8 minutes 23 seconds, indicating that they may be becoming more acquainted with the site and its content offerings.

While Google Finance is attracting traffic, financial information seekers are still using familiar sites, according to Hitwise Clickstream data. For the week ending March 25, 2006, 26 percent of visitors to Google Finance left the site for another Business Information site, including Yahoo! Finance, which accounted for 5.1 percent of downstream visits. An additional nine percent of Google Finance’s downstream visits went to Google News, indicating that Google Finance users may already be users of Google News.

“While the Google Finance market share is still relatively small compared against Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money Central, the rapid ramp in average session time for Google Finance indicates that Google searchers are interacting with this new financial portal offering,” said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research for Hitwise.  “Average session time when viewed alongside increased market share is a great measure of early adoption for content sites.”

Google Finance attracts the young and wealthy

Visitors to the Business Information category are typically older than the average Internet user – for the four weeks ending March 25, 2006, 29 percent were over age 55. While 32 percent of Google Finance’s visitors fell into this age group in its first week online, an additional 24 percent of its visitors were between the ages of 25 and 34. In comparison, 16 percent of visitors to Yahoo! Finance were aged 18-24. Google Finance visitors were also more likely to have incomes over $150,000, with 19 percent in this income bracket, compared to 10 percent of visitors to Yahoo! Finance in the same period. 

Contact:

For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Matt Tatham: matt.tatham@hitwise.com; (212) 380 2939 or Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com; (212) 380 2910.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.