Analyst Ratings Network is now MarketBeat.com

I, Matthew Paulson, am the founder of American Consumer News, LLC, the company which operates Analyst Ratings Network. We began using the brand Analyst Ratings Network in early 2012 in order to differentiate our coverage of equities research (analyst ratings) from our general financial news that we publish on American Banking and Market News (americanbankingnews.com).

While this name has served us well for the last three years, it’s time for a change. The name “Analyst Ratings Network” is too long, too complicated and too hard to remember. It became apparent to me that Analyst Ratings Network is probably a bad name for a company when I asked many of my good friends what the name of my business is. Many of them couldn’t remember and others mangled the name. A good brand name needs to be memorable and adequately describe what your business does. Analyst Ratings Network fails to meet both those qualifications, especially because Analyst Ratings Network does much more than report on analyst ratings changes.

I did a lot of brainstorming with business partners, friends and Analyst Ratings Network subscribers to identify a new name that would become on the future brand of Analyst Ratings Network. We wanted a name that would be simple, memorable and adequately describe what our business does.

Introducing MarketBeat.com

We’ve chosen MarketBeat.com as the new brand name for Analyst Ratings Network. In the world of print newspapers, a beat reporter provides informed and specialized reporting of a certain category of news (like sports or local politics). A beat reporter usually follows a regular route, talking to sources and gathering information to report on about their area of expertise. Since we’re committed to regularly reporting on real-time financial information and market data, the name MarketBeat.com is the perfect new brand name for Analyst Ratings Network.

While the name of our business is changing, the core mission hasn’t. MarketBeat.com will always work to make real-time financial information accessible to investors at all levels—from the retail investor with $1,000 in his trading account to executives at Wall Street’s megabanks (yes, some of them subscribe to our newsletter too!). MarketBeat.com will continue to offer the most comprehensive coverage of analysts' upgrades, downgrades and new coverage on the web. Whether you’re looking for ratings, dividends, earnings, economic reports, insider trades, IPOs or stock splits, MarketBeat will continue to offer the objective information you need to analyze any stock.

What else is changing?

Our core product offerings and pricing will remain the same. We will continue to offer our free daily ratings newsletter (ARN Daily) as MarketBeat Daily Ratings. ARN Daily Premium will become MarketBeat Daily Premium. RatingsDB will remain RatingsDB. We will continue to offer the same information that’s currently available on our website as well. The only thing that will be different in the short-term is our new name and logo.

When will the switch-over happen?

There’s a ton of work involved with changing a company’s brand name. For the next couple of months, you’ll likely see both names on our website and in our emails. We’ll have to update our branding on our website, revamp our ad-campaigns, update the software that creates our daily newsletters, update all of our email campaigns and make a number of other changes you would never think of. Our goal is to be fully transitioned over to the new name by August 1^st.

I have more questions.

I’m happy to personally answer any questions that you have about the switch-over. Feel free to email me at contact@marketbeat.com or hit me up on Twitter (@MatthewDP).

Matthew Paulson
Founder, MarketBeat.com (Analyst Ratings Network)