Finance Sites: Yahoo Leads, Google Lags

U.S. residents looking for financial news and information online overwhelmingly prefer Yahoo's Yahoo Finance, while Google's Google Finance has failed so far to break into the ranks of the ten most popular sites of this type, according to Hitwise.

Yahoo Finance tops Hitwise's two categories for business and finance sites, while Google Finance, launched in March, hasn't yet managed to gain enough of a following to challenge the leaders.

Google Finance generated much attention when it debuted, as it was viewed as a clear attempt by the company to snatch traffic away from long-established players such as Yahoo Finance and Microsoft's MSN Money.

Google Finance's popularity no doubt will be used as an indicator of Google's ability to succeed as a provider of non-search, Web portal-type services, which is relatively new turf for the company.

Current Rankings

In Hitwise's Business Information category, Yahoo Finance captured almost 35 percent of all visits in May, while MSN Money came in a distant second with little over 13 percent.

Time Warner's CNN Money ranked third, followed by MarketWatch and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

Google Finance ranked in 42nd place.

In the Stocks and Shares category, Yahoo Finance grabbed 24.3 percent of all visits in May, followed by MSN Money with a little over 9 percent, TD Ameritrade with 5 percent, FMR's Fidelity Investments with 4.3 percent and CNN Money with 3.1 percent. Google Finance drew 0.18 percent of the visits and ranked in 58th place, according to Hitwise, based in New York.