As promised I finally got around to testing all 118, AQA and Texperts - the three best known ‘mobile search’ providers in the UK. The idea is simple, you text the company a question and they text you an answer.

I’ve quickly typed up a little report which includes a copy of they questions asked and response received from each company. My original intention was to ask each of my questions twice to each company but due to time constraints, I could only ask once. That said, the average member of the general public is only going to ask a question once so I think there is still something to take away from this experiment of sorts.

In brief, AQA came out on top, closely followed by Texperts. While AQA answered all five of my questions correctly they did take slightly longer averaging at 11 minutes per response. I prefer the answers from Texperts which tended to be more detailed. 118 despite being very fast to reply only managed to get one question correct. I was extremely dissatisfied when they recommended an Indian restaurant when I specified Chinese.

I think it is important to remember that 118 is relatively new to the game here and are lacking quality control. I have found that 118 do occasionally strike gold in their responses but sadly it is very much dependant on who answers yours question and if they can be bothered to dig a little deeper for an answer.

  Road testing Mobile Search (63 KiB, 176 hits)

At the end of the day, I’m not sure if I’d actually use any of the services. With an iPhone in my pocket, a smartphone on my belt and a laptop in my bag I’m not sure I really need to out source my searching anywhere. But if I were to use such a service, Texperts would be the service I’d go for, heck I’d even love to be one of ther researchers afterall I have a long summer break and nothing to do.

Just for the record, I wrote to all three companies before texting ther services and both 118 and Texperts gave me free credits to test the services with. The AQA pricing strategy is different, but offered to pay for my testing.

So now I’m spend the best part of a day researching this I’d like to here from you in the comments. Leave me a note if you agree or disagree and also tell me about your experience.