Tuesday's Rant: Target.com's Search Function

On Tuesdays I usually take the opportunity to rant about something I do NOT like about Target …because although I love them to death, they certainly ain’t perfect. Today’s rant is about the "search" function on Target's web site... which is sorely lacking, and has been for years. Case in point: type in "Mossimo trench" into the search field on Target.com. What you'd expect to see is an array of trench coats by Mossimo, correct? Well yes... partly. You do get 6 pages of items - over 100 in all. And most of them are some variation of coats by Mossimo. But then you get to the second or third page, and it starts getting weird. Why is this Sherpa Vest showing up? And likewise, this Merona Rain Jacket? It's not even Mossimo-brand, for pete's sake! It's as if their search function started to give me my request with the first results, and then branched out into all things related to outerwear. And this isn't an isolated incident; this happens almost every time I do a search on Target.com, no matter how specific I make the description in the search field.

While I DO appreciate the fact that you can narrow your search by price, color, etc., I do NOT like getting so many initial results that don't pertain to my search criteria. I keep hoping that Target will improve this functionality, but so far they haven't. I'm not an expert on search engines, but it seems as if they have FAR too many keywords lumped into each category and need to narrow it down somehow.