Google and Yahoo! Finance!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Since H&H Webranking has broadened its online focus, we will in these newsletters increase the number of articles covering a wider online communication perspective. In other words we will provide you more tips, ideas and Best Practice solutions outside the corporate website as well. This time we will take a look at Google and Yahoo! Finance.

Google and Yahoo! Finance are both free online services that provide detailed financial information on different corporations; including stock quotes, financial reports, corporate press releases and news. These services also allow users to register and create their own specific portfolios making it easy to monitor selected stock information.

Each company listed on these services is represented on its own page, displaying specific financial information as well as recent news, blog posts and events connected to the company. Logged in visitors can also participate in forum discussions in regards to any featured company.

The Challenge

The information compiled on Google or Yahoo! Finance is not controlled by the featured companies, but are feeds from other sources, including financial news publications, individual blog posts and forums posts by logged in members. Changing information can therefore not be done by contacting either Yahoo or Google, they are just acting as feed aggregators. Some corporations can experience problems due to this lack of control if damaging or incorrect information is given by the source news or blog feeds connected to their page. Since Google and Yahoo are usually neutral, highly trusted sites, the information presented on these services tends to be perceived by the capital market as unbiased and true, even when it is really derived from a third party. This can make inaccurate information even more damaging as it is seen as coming from a trustworthy source, when in fact it is not.

The Solution

If you are a company that is represented on Google or Yahoo! Finance it is important to constantly monitor the news feeds connected to your corporate information. Though it is not possible to contact Google or Yahoo in cases where incorrect information is shown on these services, it is possible to find the source of the information that shaped the newsfeed and to directly get in touch with these news publications or bloggers and hopefully correct, or at least understand, their misrepresentation of your company. All large corporations who invest time and effort in public relations and analyst relations must also consider a similar investment in blog relations. There are many individual bloggers formally and informally writing and analyzing your company; their opinions may be very influential and displayed alongside your company-controlled web content in search results for your company. You must identify, start and maintain good working relationships with these bloggers to ensure their information is accurate and to increase the likelihood that they represent your company in a positive or at least fair light. While investing time and energy in blog relations, it is important not to forget to constantly update and maintain accurate information on your own corporate website; firstly because it remains a primary source of information for a notable majority of the capital market and secondly because it can also be one of the ultimate sources of information for the blogging community. A well administered corporate website will increase the chances of well-informed blog entries and minimize the amount of speculation and conjecture surrounding your company.