I was doing some research into banks’ Facebook sites and found a couple pretty terrible results when using each bank’s own search feature. Here are three samples. 

1. Citibank site-search results for “Facebook” (17 Feb 2012; 3 PM Pacific)  
The search results try to convince you to search for “fake book” instead (why?). Ironically, the second search result does lead to the bank’s Facebook page, but you’d never know it from the title, “Citibank Online – IMPORTANT INFORMATION.”

2. Chase Bank site-search results for “Facebook” 
Chase has more Facebook fans (3.4 million) than any bank on the planet, in fact almost 4x the nearest competitor. But you wouldn’t know if from their site search, which returns exactly zero useful results. 

3. US Bank site-search results for anything
It looks like US Bank’s site search is broken today. Every search comes up with the same error message. Too bad there isn’t a better error message. “We could not process your request” sounds a bit like they are shifting the blame to the user.

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Note: We’ve covered banking site-search in our Online Banking Report industry newsletter (subscription).