Google Revamps Finance

Google has enhanced Google Finance, improving its charts and adding features, to try to boost popularity of the financial information site.

Google Finance launched in March but hasn't enjoyed the same popularity of many other Google products. The updates are intended to make Google Finance more competitive.

New Features

The site's new charts can display up to 40 years of historical data for U.S. stocks, up from five years previously, a spokesperson says.

The company also added a "top mover" module to the site's home page that spotlights companies with the biggest changes in stock price, market capitalization, and trading volume, as well as those that have been searched for the most in Google's search engine, she said. Google also increased the ways to customize and organize portfolios, and made it possible to import portfolios from other Web sites.

Tough Competition

It remains to be seen how much these latest improvements will help boost the site's popularity. Google's entry has lagged its competitors in the category of financial information Web sites.

For the week ending December 9, Google Finance ranked 31st in site traffic monitoring service Hitwise's Stocks and Shares category of business and finance sites with a measly 0.48 percent of visitors. Yahoo's Yahoo Finance ranked first with almost 24 percent of all visits, while Microsoft MSN Money nabbed a distant second place with 8.4 percent.

Google Finance came in 23rd place in Hitwise's Business Information category with 0.70 percent of all visits. Yahoo ranked first with almost 35 percent of visits, while MSN Money was second with 12.4 percent.