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September 11, 2007
Nielsens/NetRatings: Yahoo Still Leads Most-Trafficked Financial Websites
Fascinating stuff in the latest release from Nielsen's/NetRatings with respect to traffic to the most-visited financial websites. Yahoo Finance remains well out in front, and Google, while moving up somewhat, is still a vanishingly small percentage of total category traffic.Here is the raw data:
| Brand or Channel | Unique Audience (000) | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
| Yahoo! Finance | 16,844 | 0:23:35 |
| MSN Money | 12,297 | 0:19:13 |
| AOL Money | 10,077 | 0:16:58 |
| Forbes.com | 9,136 | 0:05:18 |
| Wall Street Journal Digital | 8,445 | 0:22:39 |
| CNNMoney | 8,105 | 0:14:00 |
| Reuters | 6,355 | 0:05:25 |
| Bankrate.com | 3,977 | 0:07:20 |
| Bloomberg.com | 3,502 | 0:05:26 |
| TheStreet.com | 3,491 | 0:07:50 |
| Motley Fool | 3,369 | 0:16:32 |
| American City Business | 2,821 | 0:03:22 |
| BusinessWeek Online | 2,796 | 0:04:15 |
| FreeCreditReport.com | 2,637 | 0:09:49 |
| About.com Business & Finance | 2,557 | 0:01:57 |
| Smartmoney | 1,880 | 0:11:32 |
| USATODAY.com Money | 1,875 | 0:05:09 |
| FT.com | 1,765 | 0:03:04 |
| Google Finance | 1520 | 0:16:08 |
| Morningstar | 1466 | 0:19:24 |
And here is a graph of the cumulative percentage of total traffic to sites by decreasing order of popularity, i.e, from Yahoo Finance to Google Finance & Morningstar. You'll see, for example, that the top four sites -- Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. -- get almost 50% of the finance category traffic. I'm guess this figure was considerably steeper a few years ago, and it has opened somewhat in recent years.
[Nielsens/NetRatings via 24/7 Wall St]
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Yeah, I knew some people would have that reaction. It's a cumulative figure though, so you need to think about what percentage of the total traffic to all finance properties is accounted for by the sites in question.
I think a pie chart with the 20 ranked entities running clockwise (yahoo,..., google, morningstar) around would convey the information better.
If you insist on a linear graph, flipping the x-axis might convey the info better: the flipped axis more-correctly runs from "20 to 1" -- your current x-axis actually starts at "0" which is nonsense, because there is no 0th place, and it also suggests there is something after 20, which there isn't.
Data visualization is fun -- thanks for the post, and reply :)
Did the data come from 24/7 Wall St.?
Yes, it did. That's why I have the link to 24/7 Wall St at the bottom of the post.
Confusing way to present the data: casually, it looks like google is "best" because it's almost highest, and that yahoo is the worst of all because it's the lowest, when exactly the opposite is true.
BTW, the link you provided does not seem to present it that way (might have missed it tho).
Maybe it's just too early and I'm easily confused. I certainly know I don't like to think to hard when looking at a graph/data presentation -- that's what they are for! :)
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