A comparative study of the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effect of the spherical gold nanoparticles (NPs) and highly uniform and oriented gold nanotriangles (NTs), anchored on indium tin oxide (ITO) coated conducting glass surfaces is reported. Contact and non-contact mode atomic force microscopic (AFM) analyses confirmed that all the triangles observed are equilateral and uniformly stacked. The NTs-coated ITO exhibited intense near-infrared (NIR) absorption and showed an extremely strong SERS activity than the spherical NPs. The NTs showed a very good SERS enhancement factor on the order of 4 × 10 8. The results are interpreted in terms of the increased density of hot spots on the NTs-coated surface. © 2009 American Scientific Publishers.