Check out article below & do your own research on the acquired...

Check out article below & do your own research on the acquired company's website -

www.australianlocalsearch.com.au

Your will find that Ansearch Ltd is an alliance via 'Phonebook.com.au' with (ALS) and this company just got taken over by News Ltd!!

Things can only get better with ANH...All the best those that hold!

LINK:
http://australianit.news.com.au/?from=nibusiness_leftnav

News to challenge Telstra's Sensis
By John Lehmann
19-01-2006
From: The Australian
RUPERT Murdoch's News Limited is set to unleash a challenge to Telstra's $1.6 billion-a-year Sensis listings business.

News Interactive managing director Nic Jones told The Australian yesterday the media group would launch a new website within weeks that provided access to about one million local trades and services listings.
He revealed that News had acquired Australian Local Search (ALS), which utilises advanced search technology enabling users to precisely search listings in a single click.

The website will pull together the hundreds of thousands of business listings collected by News's network of 100 community newspapers, along with ALS's 700,000 listings.

"What you will see in the very near future is an integrated business that is about small and medium businesses being able to connect with their community not only through their community newspapers but also online," Mr Jones said.

Referring to Telstra's booming Sensis business, Mr Jones said the service would be "competitive to Yellow Pages".

In the past three years, Sensis has grown its sales from $1.217 billion to $1.585 billion a year, growing 17.3 per cent in 2005. Mr Jones said the new listings service would offer "better functionality", enabling searches to be conducted more easily and quickly.

ALS operations director Paul Harvell said search results were listed by relevance rather than prices paid by advertisers.

ALS was established two years ago and has been powering the listings for Yahoo's fledgling local search service.

It allows users to search by keyword, name or brand.

News, publisher of The Australian and NEWS.com.au, plans to promote the new online service through the pages of its community newspapers.

The newspapers' websites will be also linked to the new listings service.

News's community newspapers managing director, Alasdair Macleod, said the acquisition would allow the company to deliver online and print audiences to advertisers.

Mr Jones declined to comment on speculation that News paid about $10 million for the acquisition.

Sensis, which launched its own internet search engine in 2003, is valued by some market analysts at up to $12 billion.

Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo championed Sensis as the company's major growth engine to help counter the deterioration of its core telephony business when he unveiled his five-year strategy last November.

News is one of Telstra's partners in pay-TV business Foxtel.

Sensis has earnings margins of 55 per cent, but at present only 7 per cent of sales come from online activities.

Yellow Pages still accounts for 68 per cent of its sales.

Mr Murdoch has committed his news and entertainment empire to leading the online revolution by transforming itself into a "internet heavyweight".

He embraced cyberspace with a $US1.3 billion ($1.77 billion) purchase of online assets in 2005, including Intermix Media - which owns the popular MySpace.com site - for $US580 million.