Paul ..

I've abandoned using their website because several times I've tried searching for common products that they always have - but the search results come up empty, or completely irrelevant. I'm competent online and software engineer by trade. Their search feature should be embarrassing to them.

Try searching for clingwrap or cling wrap in the "Hyper Brackenfell" store. Sure, wrapping paper is nice, but that's not what I want. If you go though all 3 pages of results you won't find cling wrap. The mere fact that this happens means that I can't trust their search at all.

It does seem like the search effectiveness changes depending on the store. If I choose "Willowbridge Click and Collect" as the store, and search for "cling wrap" I find what I'm after... except, only the second time I try.

Also, when I search for "carrots" I guess you'd expect I was looking for carrots? Why would carrot cake be second in the list? Surely if I wanted carrot cake I'd search for... carrot cake?

I feel like Pick n Pay have implemented their search in a lazy manner. It seems like they simply take all the words from their product description and jam that into the search index. Search for "light bulbs" and what comes up on page 1? Light foil, Robertson's Light White (wine... and despite the sale being banned presently), Ryvita Light Rye, Coca-Cola Light, PnP Light Hummus, and so on and so on.

It really is not hard to pay a team of search and linguistic professionals to be intelligent about how they index their search. Instead, they expect I'm going to wade through their irrelevant results? No, I don't think so.

The first South African retailer to implement product search and logistics properly will make an absolute killing.