Automated functional testing of online search services

Authors

Zhiquan Zhou, University of Wollongong
Shujia Zhang, University of Wollongong
Markus Hagenbuchner, University of WollongongFollow
T. Tse, University of Hong KongFollow
Fei-Ching Kuo, University of WollongongFollow
T. Y. Chen, Swinburne University of Technology

RIS ID

76315

Publication Details

Zhou, Z. Quan., Zhang, S., Hagenbuchner, M., Tse, T. H., Kuo, F. & Chen, T. Y. (2012). Automated functional testing of online search services. Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 22 (4), 221-243.

Abstract

Search services are the main interface through which people discover information on the Internet. A fundamental challenge in testing search services is the lack of oracles. The sheer volume of data on the Internet prohibits testers from verifying the results. Furthermore, it is difficult to objectively assess the ranking quality because different assessors can have very different opinions on the relevance of a Web page to a query. This paper presents a novel method for automatically testing search services without the need of a human oracle. The experimental findings reveal that some commonly used search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and Live Search, are not as reliable as what most users would expect. For example, they may fail to find pages that exist in their own repositories, or rank pages in a way that is logically inconsistent. Suggestions are made for search service providers to improve their service quality.