Today it's a shadow of its former self

It threw up two international flag manufacturing sites before giving sites for musician James Taylor's CD Flag and Flag Motor Inns. It fared better in tracking down Gallipoli information and most of the computer dictionary results were impressive. You can also look for answers in newsgroups, product search service Froogle, and search for images and video. Extras include street maps, weather and language translation. Sensis Rating For a long time Sensis was the name behind the White and Yellow pages. Sensis is a relative newcomer to the local search market, and it was initially a little clunky to use, but the site has recently been revamped, revealing a brighter design and better search facility. Search results appear in two columns, with content on the left more likely to be relevant to Australians, while the right has a more international focus. And, hallelujah, Sensis was able to tell us where we could go to buy flags in Australia, with the first search result being spot on. Our search on Gallipoli returned better results on the international side of the screen. As for Australianspecific computer dictionary sites, most of the lefthand side proved irrelevant, as expected, but results on the right were more detailed. A good compromise and surprisingly thorough results. ninemsn ninemsn.au RatingMany computers in Australia are shipped with Microsoft's Windows operating system and bundled with Internet Explorer. The default ninemsn home page (complete with search facility) is all some people know which is a shame. This local site, a joint venture between USbased Microsoft and Australian media group PublishingBroadcasting Ltd, does a good job of bringing the companies' brands together, including Channel Nine's TV shows and ACP's magazines, but its search facility performed poorly. Nothing in the first eight results had anything connected to buying a flag. Four of the first 10 results on Gallipoli were OK, but the computer dictionary search was the most successful. As well as being able to search the web, news and images, ninemsn can Rosetta Stone do a basic hunt through Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia ideal for school work. Yahoo! RatingLike ninemsn, the Yahoo! search facility is embedded into its home page, where many other services such as news, a local TV guide and ads vie for attention. It offers searches in the categories of web, images, video and news. Its muchtouted Local Search (localsearch.yahoo.au) was launched in August last year, but neither it nor the main Yahoo! Australia and NZ site had much luck with our flag request. Local Search thought we wanted a graphic designer, and the main site guessed eBay was the best place to buy exMelbourne Cup banners and flags not exactly what we were after. Our search on Gallipoli was more successful, with five of the first 10 results deemed relevant. There were no problems locating several computer dictionaries. Mixed results. Rating Before there was Google, AltaVista reigned supreme. Today it's a shadow of its former self. Alta Vista now uses the same search index as Yahoo! and results from the two were similar. Alta Vista appears to be thorough by offering web, image, audio, video and news searches. You can choose whether to search Australia or the whole web, and whether to stick to English language results or all languages. But appearances are deceiving. Like ninemsn, AltaVista couldn't tell us where to buy a flag in Melbourne, but threw up a store in Tucson, Arizona and plenty of sites for AFL footy clubs. We found five good Gallipoli links within the first 10 results, and it found the usual computer dictionary suspects with ease. Disappointingly, sponsored links are not clearly separated from the main results. Verdict Sensis was best for Australian searches, with its results relevant and the site easy to use.

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