Re: GEO Search with large table is very slow

[Rick James]

Two more tricks for timing queries, thereby deducing performance...

1. You are using PHP? Use microtime(TRUE) around queries. Run each query at least twice, timing each one. The second one will be fully cached.

2. Do
SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Handler_%';
before and after running a query. Diff the columns; this will give you some cryptic clues of how much work it had to do.

Each of these is pretty good at comparing one SELECT / INDEX combo to another combo.

You aren't run it with a clear cache, but small times/diffs probably mean that there will be few or no disk hits in a real environment.