Why site search is so lame
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009As of this writing, entering “spackle” at Lowes.com shows no actual spackle, but instead shows 25 results for “sparkle.” Searching the eCards collection at AmericanGreetings.com for “co-worker birthday” yields vastly different results than for “coworker birthday.” And in trying to find out what music reviewers at LATimes.com have to say about alternative rock band 311’s hit single “Hey You,” one finds only articles about an LA Dodger who happens to have a .311 batting average.
What is most annoying to me about these examples is that I actually like all three of these companies. I have a paid membership to AmericanGreetings; I bought something from Lowes as recently as last week; I have been reading the LA Times with pleasure for over 20 years.
But the search function is deplorable on these sites, all of them – as is the case on many other websites having good value to offer, if only one could find it. I’ve had editors of more than one big-name publisher tell me that they often cannot find an article that they themselves wrote, just the previous week, on their own publication’s website, even when they enter into their site search the precise words they remember writing. If the guy who wrote the article can’t find it on his own site, how on earth are you and I going to find it?
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