Take the Extended Treasury Duration Fund EDV from Vanguard. That page says the most recent dividend was $0.76900/share. But if I download data from Yahoo using a link like this it gives $4.46 as the dividend/share.
Every website I find (like this one) says that the "d" is the URL parameter for dividend/share. Is Yahoo giving some different data, or am I downloading the wrong thing? Does Yahoo use a different number for dividend/share?
In the context of EDV, 4.46 is the indicated dividend rate. The indicated dividend rate is the rate that would be paid per share throughout the next year, assuming dividends stayed the same as prior payment.
sources:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=EDV+Historical+Prices shows this which matches Vanguard:
Mar 24, 2014 0.769 Dividend
Your download link doesn't specify dates which makes me wonder if it is a cumulative distribution or something else as one can wonder how did you ensure that the URL is specifying to list only the most recent distribution and not something else.
For example, try this URL which specifies date information in the a,b,c,d,e,f parameters: http://real-chart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=EDV&a=00&b=29&c=2014&d=05&e=16&f=2014&g=v&ignore=.csv
