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Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America

Analyst Weblog

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Google Finance - If it Looks Like a Portal...

March 29, 2006

Yesterday, I moderated a panel at OMMA West entitled "The Re-emergence of the Portal." The gist of the panel discussion was that the days of the stand-alone search engine are over. As those search engines (namely Google) continue to build out new properties and services, the search engines are starting to resemble portals. Why is this important? Because, I believe this marks a new war for site dominance between search and portal properties. While the first battle in search centered on the engines ability to deliver relevant search results, I submit that the next battle in search will focus on how quickly engines can deliver actual content (think maps in local searches, comparison prices in product searches, and now stock quotes for ticker searches).

As we watch the Google properties grow to include email, mapping, groups, blogs, social networking, personalized pages, etc..., I think the time has come to say what is on all our minds... Google is a portal (not that there's anything wrong with that).

In fact, this last week Google made its long rumored Google Finance service available. I thought I'd take this opportunity to provide everyone with some basic stats on Google Finance and its two portal rivals, Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money Central. Below is a chart showing the market share in visits (for all Internet sites, U.S.) for Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money Central.

Google Finance debuted in the Hitwise Rankings in 28th position in the Business & Finance - Business Information category for the week ending March 25th, 2006 (Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money Central were in first and second position in the category during that same timeframe). Another interesting stat that I pulled below, shows where the new Google Finance site ranks amongst the other popular Google properties.

News, maps, email and now financial info... looks like a portal to me.

Posted by Bill Tancer at 08:09 PM | (0) | (0)

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