Sydney Morning Herald website - Home of Australia's worst search function?

The Sydney Morning Herald - nice work, if you can find it. ©

I confess that my favourite part of the Sydney Morning Herald is the Good Weekend section; I look forward to my quiet time on Saturday with it, and a coffee. And, as part of the Customer Underground team, I’m interested in customer service stories. Squarely at the intersection of these two interests was a column by Mark Dapin a few months ago which included a vignette about being stuffed around by JetStar. After reading, I decided I’d like to send it to some other members of the Underground, and maybe make it a “Caught My Eye.” It being theoretically the digital age, I imagined that I would email a link to the article – rather than, say, Xeroxing the clipping and sending it through Australia Post. Oh, the naïveté. Instead, I find myself penning this rant. How did I get here? Let me tell you.

I admit the the first misstep was mine: I couldn’t remember the author’s name (though I could imagine his picture, and the location of the article). So on www.smh.com.au, I first try to find the Good Weekend section. Hm...no such listing. I decide to try searching for “Good Weekend.” Surely this must appear – it has to be one of the most-read sections of the paper. The first result, sorted by “Most Relevant?” An article from by Ian Verrender on Elders, from the business section. Not to knock Mr. Verrender, but this was not what I was looking for. Furthermore, the words “good weekend” do not appear once in the article. How is this the “most relevant” article?

Then I try to apply logical thinking and find the columnist: would he be considered part of “Life and Style?” Those categories (Beauty, Wellbeing, Essential Baby) don’t seem a good fit. Perhaps his is a Life & Style blog? It’s clearly not “Beauty Beat” or “Fear & Clothing,” so I try the only two that seem faintly plausible, “All Men Are Liars” and “Who’s Your Daddy?” No luck. Finally, after some further failed attempts, I admit defeat, blaming my poor memory and haphazard approach.

Out comes the big gun: the actual paper article, resurrected from the recycle bin. Here is the author’s name! Here is proof that I didn’t imagine the column! Back at smh.com, I search “dapin” and get 19 results. I feel pleased, on the verge of a breakthrough. Admittedly, the top article is about Gibraltar, and is from last November, but I sort by “Most Recent,” sure that my quest is almost over. Instead, I find that it has barely begun: the “most recent” article is from March. (Let me remind you it is now September.) I try a variety of other searches (trying to find the author “Mark Dapin”; trying a Google search), with no luck. Desperation sets in: I search for JetStar, for Qantas, and various other combinations. All fruitless.

Finally, I give up. I let go of my dream of sharing content with others. I decide to write a rant for the Underground instead. At least I know this will go online, and maybe even be findable – that is, once we get our search engine working...