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I'm Searching... By Pat McKenna I always find it amazing when online newspapers puff out their chests and boast that their dot coms are "top flight" in consistently meeting the content expectations of their users. How could it not be the case with incredibly high traffic metrics, right? Well, I must be cursed, because every time I visit one of these sites, their internal search engines yield less than "top-flight" results. That said, here's a little search engine game you can play at home. All the President's Men Have Left the Building Outside of the New York Times, The Washington Post is rightly considered to be the paper of record for American government. After all, who could forget Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein's investigative reporting that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon? They won a Pulitzer. So, I wandered out to washpost.com, hoping to find their original articles. My search found absolutely nothing using the following keywords:
Google, however, pointed me to an exhibition site from the Harry Ranson Center at the University of Texas at Austin entitled: "The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers." It's a fantastic mini-site with scanned copies of the pair's original articles, as well as their notes and plenty more. Plus, the Center's own internal search engine successfully pulled up the mini-site in the top results using the keywords above. It's a Laugh Riot On April 11,1965, the City of Los Angeles was in the grip of one of the Nation's most destructive inner city riots. The City of Watts had erupted after years of police abuse and aggression. For 6 days, the Nation watched as burning storefronts, uncontrolled looting, physical altercations with police and attacks upon white motorists ravaged the area. It took the National Guard to restore order. One might think that such a major, historical event would top the L.A. Times search engine results. Er... no. Here's the tale-o-the-search:
Another visit to Google generated an interesting result. The L.A. Times DID do an interesting story on the Watts riots, aptly entitled "Watts Riots, 40 Years Later." Why this wasn't the first result on the L.A. Times search results defies logic. One Lone Gunman...Or None President John F. Kennedy's assassination defined us as a people. The Dallas Morning News was there. However, the search results on dallasnews.com suggest that all of its reporters may well have been in Kuala Lumpur that week covering a coconut eating contest. I used the site's search engine to target the following keywords:
Google came to the rescue once again. Like the L.A. Times, there IS a special section for the JFK assasination on dallasnews.com. You'll never find it -- or at least, I couldn't. The Lesson? Ain't It Obvious Google has produced a search and retrieve online culture. People want like results wherever they go. While newspapers will never replicate Google, that doesn't excuse editors and senior management from prioritizing internal search as a mission critical function. Those who argue otherwise, or maintain a "users will just go to Google mentality," should be shown the door. I'll gladly open it.
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