Five reasons why Google Finance is a winner

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

When Google Finance was launched in 2006, this investment search interface was still in beta and drew negative reviews.

The field of free financial search engines had been dominated by Yahoo Finance for at least eight years and, even today, Yahoo has better coverage of foreign markets.

By listening to feedback from investors and smart web design, Google engineers have created a top-notch research tool for investors.

However, by mid-2010, Google Finance had improved dramatically.

Today, it is by far, in my opinion, the best free financial research tool for the US market, and, as it adds foreign markets, it has the potential to become the best tool of its kind on the Internet.

The basics of OSINT investment search

Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, FINVIZ.com, and many other investment search interfaces usually have three features in common:

1. Filtered search of web pages that contain news or analysis of investment instruments and markets;
2. A database search tool based on financial statistics of listed companies;
3. A graphics program to display price-volume charts of traded companies.

All of these sites deal in open source information, which means that it is up to the reader to determine the accuracy and relevance of the data presented.

None of these sites guarantee that the information presented is true, unbiased, or reliable.

In other words, the information presented is like anything else on the Internet — it is subject to reader analysis and interpretation.

The Google Finance difference

Given that the major finance sites all share similar information, what is it that makes Google Finance stand out?

The answer is ease of use.

Gradually, over four years, Google engineers, listening to suggestions of investors, developed an interface that is cleaner, easier to understand, less cluttered, and more convenient for the intended purpose.

Here are five areas in which Google Finance excels:

1. It’s free, with few ads: Competing free sites tend to be cluttered with annoying advertisement that distract the reader. Google Finance usually has only one, non-intrusive ad per page, and sometimes none. Most fee-based sites, which are sometimes quite expensive, often do not offer more information than Google Finance.
2. Pages with tabbed access: Smart site design is a major feature of Google Finance. Different portfolio views, trend parameters, selections of news articles, and so forth, are made available without changing pages, by means of tabbed access. This allows readers to see alternate view of information without leaving the page.
3. Screening for similars: A particular useful feature of Google Finance is the ability to produce a smart list of similar stocks from any stock page, based on automatically generated financial parameters relevant to that particular stock. This is in addition to a conventional stock screener.
4. Command center interface: The left sidebar of Google Finance acts as an easily accessed command center for investment research. The sidebar stays permanently in place as you view different stocks or search results, which, in combination with tabbed interfaces, makes it easy to keep track of where you are at all times. (In contrast, it is not hard to get lost in similar sites.)
5. Strict focus: Google Finance is focused on financial research. Competing sites often are cluttered with pages with only peripheral relevance to investment research, such as articles on personal finance: how to buy insurance, career planning, personal loans, and so forth.

Like competing sites, Google Finance has the usual features and tools of interest to stock investment researchers: portfolio control, a stock screener, world market indices, major currency pairs, recent trading trends, bond rates, and a range of information of interest to fundamental and technical analysts.

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I‘ve decided that Google Finance deserves a series of articles, describing how to use its many features.

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