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Ever been to the Sims 3 Exchange? Ever tried searching for sims? If you have, you have my condolences.

The Sims 3 Exchange has to have the most failtastic search engine I have ever encountered. Never have I seen a search engine that was so successful at failing to find what you were looking for, despite the fact what you are looking for does, in fact, exist. Instead, it often seems to choose a handful of Sims completely at random, except for the obligatory Twilight sims it throws in for good measure.

For example, I search for the keywords “Sailor Moon.” Now, there is no shortage of Sailor Moon sims on the Exchange. Yet for some reason, I get about a half-dozen sims that most definitely have nothing to do with Sailor Moon, including not one, but TWO Bella Swans.

Oddly enough, a few minutes later I search for “Sailor Moon” again and actually get a few Sailor Moon sims in there. But for some freakish reason, Bella Swan is still the first result.

Now, I search for “Stephen Colbert.” Out of 24 results, I have no Stephen Colberts, but I have two Esme Cullens, a Rosalie Hale, two Bella Swans, two Alice Cullens, several sims with names like Stephenie or Stephans, and a handful with no clear relation to my keywords at all.

Surprisingly, only two out of the twenty four results are related to Twilight when I search for the word “vampire.” Funny, you would think that “vampire” would have more to do with Twilight than “Stephen Colbert,” but apparently not.

Equally surprising, searching for “Final Fantasy” yields results that are actually related to Final Fantasy. I see three Rikkus, a Lightning, a Yuna, and… Bella Swan?!

By now, I should note that going to the second page of search results doesn’t actually work. You don’t get the second page of search results. You get the second page of the latest sims uploaded.

So, let’s refine our search – we’ll search for “Sephiroth.” The only thing I get is a Tifa Lockheart.

Surprisingly, searching for “Tifa Lockheart” actually results in a lot of Tifa Lockhearts, or at least Sims who have “Tifa” in their name somewhere. “Tinkerbell” is also a search that ends up yielding good results – surprise, surprise, no sparkling vampires come up.

“Harry Potter” yields a few Mary Sues plus the ugliest Luna Lovegood you can (but probably don’t want to) imagine. There are no actual Harry Potters, and although there is room on the page for more results, the decent Harry Potter-related sims I found on someone else’s Exchange profile do not appear at all.

Now, with Michael Jackson just having passed away, you would think that searching for Michael Jackson would result in actual Michael Jackson sims. You’d be wrong. The first result is Janet Jackson, a few Sims whose surnames are Jackson or Michaels, but there are no Michael Jacksons to be seen. As usual, there are a handful of Sims who make no sense whatsoever.

At this point, I am becoming increasingly frustrated at the search engine’s constant failures. Of course, I shouldn’t be so surprised; this is EA, after all.

What do you want to bet that JM Pescado could have the dumb thing working in fifteen minutes?