Looking to cash in on its popular stock portal, Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is broadening its Yahoo! Finance offering. This morning's revamp includes consumer-oriented content on personal-finance issues such as tax planning, real estate investing, and information pertaining to home businesses.
Like its heavily trafficked equity site, Yahoo! won't be providing its own content. Instead, it's leaning on syndicated content from third-party authorities on personal finance, including Morningstar (NASDAQ:MORN), Bankrate (NASDAQ:RATE), and Dow Jones (NYSE:DJ). And yes, you'll find some of the more popular Motley Fool personal-finance articles there, too.
The move makes sense on a few different levels. For starters, personal finance articles are more evergreen than most types of news. I saw featured articles that were written a couple of months ago, yet they still feel fresh. Yahoo! also has a receptive community at its doorstep. According to comScore, Yahoo! Finance drew 9.6 million stateside visitors last month. That trails only Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) MSN Money. Personal finance is also a lucrative market for advertisers.
Another clincher? The upgrade helps keep Yahoo! ahead of its biggest rival. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) launched a stock-research site back in March, and it's better for Yahoo! to broaden its breadth now before Google emerges as a market-share-chomping threat.
The new Yahoo! area has a similar feel to its stock-based content. In an especially neat tweak, it incorporates its active Yahoo! Answers site as a clever platform to generate user-generated financial advice.
Will this be enough to awaken Yahoo! shares from their recent slumber? Probably not, but it's incremental and logical. Wall Street doesn't ignore that kind of moneymaking thinking for too long.
Yahoo! is an active recommendation for Stock Advisor subscribers. Bankrate is a Rule Breakers newsletter pick. Microsoft is an Inside Value selection. You can take a peek at any of these services free for 30 days.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a fan of Yahoo! Finance, even if he has been frustrated at the growth rate of Yahoo! in general. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
