Dear Dr.Schmidt:
Google Finance currently ranks 18th among all financial websites with 851,000 unique visitors in September. That puts it behind sites like The Motley Fool and Bloomberg. MSN Money had 10.9 million unique visitors last month.
Is there anything wrong with the content at Google Finance? No. The quote sections and charts are excellent. The news is easy to navigate. The P&L and balance sheet data are better than those at Yahoo! Finance. The site could have its own analyst estimate area and SEC data, but those are minor issues.
Google already runs financial text ads at a huge number of affiliate websites. That includes places like Reuters.com.
It is probably not unfair to guess that if Google put the "Finance" button at the top of its homepage next to "Maps" and "Images", the traffic to Google Finance could move up to five million or six million unique visitors each month. With perhaps 60 million page views a month and several display and text ads on each page, the Finance section of Google could bring in $100 million a year. Could the ads get a $10 CPM? Yes, and probably more.
Not a huge amount given the company’s total reveue. But, found money.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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