8. Conclusion

Our verdict: use Live Search

Yahoo Go is very polished and easy to navigate through, as far as the different tabs and sections are concerned. It brings you a lot of information, and it’s the only one of the client apps that includes photos, although these aren’t always useful for helping you find the place you’re looking for. But there’s no T9 or SureType support, so typing is harder than usual, and when you choose the common searches there are few sub-categories; this means you get all the restaurants in an area, rather than getting to see them ordered by cuisine. You can find a specific business quickly, see a rating and call them - but getting directions is almost impossible unless you use Yahoo Go on a phone with a GPS. You might as well stick to OneSearch.

Google Maps assumes you want to do everything from the map, including reading directions and entering information. The amount of information you see on screen can be confusing, especially since it includes the data size of map downloads and whether traffic information is available. Results are usually accurate, but the other applications make it simpler to call a business or get directions than Google Maps does. It’s even simpler on the Google Local Search site, though the maps and directions are much more powerful in Google Maps.

Naturally, none of these apps are replacements for good GPS navigation packages like CoPilot or TomTom - they’re not safe to use if you’re driving because there’s no voice navigation, you don’t get real-time instructions, and you also get no help if you miss a turn. That said, Live Search has some of the best directions you can get without having GPS, and the combination of the list of turns and the map route works very well. If Live Search had managed the right results in all our test searches we’d give it an unqualified recommendation. As it is, if you have the choice of all three apps on your device, use Live Search and keep Google Maps as a backup.