Where’s Team Radio Shack? Search Engine Fail

The image above is a screen grab from the RadioShack.com website, click on it to enlarge it. When I use the website’s search function for “team radio shack” and use the “entire site” field, I get a vaguely relevant wristband and then the second option is a game for the Nintendo Wii.

In fact if you browse the whole Radio Shack website it’s impossible to find any mention of the cycling team and Lance Armstrong. The home page has nothing. Even if you look up the tiny “about us” link at the bottom of the page, there’s information about how many stores they’ve got in Mexico but no mention of the team. It’s only amongst the investor relations pages that news of donations to Livestrong and the Armstrong name is mentioned in some past headlines, amongst regulatory filings about dividend declarations and a product recall of the Danbar Toys’ Knight Hawk toy helicopter.

Thanks to google I found http://www.livestrong.com/teamradioshack/ , the official site of the team. But note the domain, it’s part of Livestrong.com, the money-making side of the Livestrong empire. This partly explains why the team doesn’t appear on the Radio Shack site.

I’ve blogged in the past about how none the French teams will embrace technology like Twitter, even when the whole point of a team is to get free publicity. But he we have a big budget US team that just doesn’t seem to be part of Radio Shack’s online presence. If the US retailer is spending millions on marketing with Lance, why not include at least a link to the team’s site? Armstrong is one of the most marketable sports stars in the world.

EDIT: I’ve written a small follow up, click here to read it.