With the launch of Bing this week, as well as the recent introductions of Wolfram Alpha and Zuula, I thought I’d share my tips for how I kick the tires on a new search engine to see how good it is.
1. Type in your own name.
You know who you are, so see how much the search engine knows about you. Unless you have a very common name, even a mediocre search engine should return your facebook page somewhere on the first page or two.
2. Search for Viagra.
Really. Do a search on Viagra. If a search engine wants to be good it has to know how to handle spam, and there is TONS of spam for Viagra. Everyone hates spammy search results, so this is something new engines must have solved before they open to the public. If you don’t see legit medical and product information for Viagra, then they haven’t figured out how to handle spam.
3. Do a search on Barack Obama.
Next to relevancy, engines must be able to return fresh results. A search on the President should have a decent number of results that are no more than 2 days old.
If a new search engine gets good marks on all three of those tests, then they have spent time and effort developing a worthwhile, sophisticated backbone.
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UPDATE (half joking):
A good way to test any Microsoft search engine is to do a search on Google-specific products. Will Microsoft have plenty of Google-related goods, or will they attempt subjugate their arch enemy?
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