Search Engine Review (for UWO)

A player could not find the information he was looking for and asked a question in the forums about "What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item".

As usual, someone said "just google it" and right after posted the image below (which also shows a slighly modified query):

As the player said he had already googled it, so I decided to investigate.

My Analysis

Ok so I redid the player's steps to understand what happened and this is the result for the query "What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item" in google on jan/11 (Half a month after the episode):

Google (What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

I went into every blog post and none of them is related to Uncharted Waters Online (Our game). So the player was right:

He could not find the answer on Google...

And you could say, as the forum replier said, "just add uwo to the query and you will get better results" and that's true.

But the point of this post is to compare search engines. Would the other search engines be capable of answering your query?

So I decided to do a Google vs. Bing vs. Duck Duck Go comparison using the raw query and the one with the uwo modifier.

Google (uwo What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

This is the result for "uwo What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item":

Good result:

• "Sailor Equipment List and Guide" (1st)

Now 8 out of 10 are actually about UWO. The other 2 are from Reddit and Steam (Both completely offtopic, irrelevant and unhelpful).

The number 1 answer is actually the best answer on the internet today. Although it does not actually target it, it did list all sailor equipment tools.

Now let's see how other search engines perform:

Bing (What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

Bing gets the best answer without having to add the "uwo" modifier.

Good result:

• "Sailor Equipment List and Guide" (1st like Google when the uwo modifier was added to it)

So right from the start Bing could give a best answer with less keywords to type.

Bing (uwo What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

When the uwo modifier is added the results get better. The best answer is still number 1 but other relevant / helpful results show up like "How to repair your Ship" (Which is a broader guide topic) and a forum topic on "Can sailor equipment be repaired?"

Good results:

• "Sailor Equipment List and Guide" (1st like Google when the uwo modifier is added)
• "How to repair your Ship" (2nd) 
• "Can sailor equipment be repaired?" (4th)

Duck Duck Go (What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

Duck Duck Go's result is as bad as google (No relevant answer to UWO):

Duck Duck Go (uwo What’s the best sailor equip repair tool/item)

However, when the "uwo" modified is added, the engine produces a better answer than bing.

It got the best answer correctly and included the most relevant and helpful answers first. 

• "Sailor Equipment List and Guide" (1st like Bing / both queries and Google when the uwo modifier is added)
• "How to repair your Ship" (2nd like Bing) 
• "Can sailor equipment be repaired?" (3rd / Bing showed it 4th)

Conclusion

Given the 3 search engines I would rank them in this order, considering the results above and the criteria of getting to the best answer as fast as possible:

• 1st: Bing
• 2nd: Duck Duck Go
• 3rd: Google

Even though Duck Duck Go gave a better answer when the modifier "uwo" was added, it did a poor job figuring out search intent when the modifier was not added.

P.S.: As usual, and for sake of clarity, I included the "cheapest" and "best" modifiers next to each repair item in the sailor's equipment guide. This was done after the search engine review so it did not change the results before I could evaluate them.