New Beta Site Pushes AOL Finance To Top Spot

AOL released a much needed improvement to their Finance site last November at beta.finance.aol.com. At the time, the site was the third largest money and finance site after Yahoo Finance and MSN Money.

December Comscore data is now available, and it shows a steep rise in traffic for AOL Finance. They’ve passed both Yahoo and Microsoft to take the top spot in terms of unique visitors. AOL rose from 12.2 million unique visitors in November to 13.5 million in December, a 10% increase. Meanwhile Yahoo dipped from 13.7 to 13.2 million unique visitors, and MSN Money dipped from 11.6 to 11 million visitors. The combined decrease in Yahoo’s and MSN’s audiences is almost equal to the gains by made by AOL.

AOL Finance also saw 335 million page views, slightly more than second place Yahoo Finance with 333 million. This is actually a slight drop from November, although that may be a good thing, too. Many of the changes allow users to get updated information without page refreshes, so page views are more efficient and users are happier.

If you are a heavy user of any of the major finance sites, let us know which one you think is best. But AOL seems to have made the right changes in their new beta. It will replace the existing site in the next six weeks or so.