Australia, we need to have a quick chat about Latin-derived words we only dust off once or twice a decade.
Only a minute after we felt fully competent wheeling out ‘plebiscite’, the Australian Bureau of Statistics dropped ‘census’ on the public, and you better believe that lil’ fustercluck of “c” and “s” resulted in some totally bung Google searches.
According to Sensis – you may see where this story is going by now – traffic to their site peaked at almost triple the average over Tuesday night, eventually bringing the site down.
We can only imagine the company responsible for White Pages celebrated their long-awaited internet dominance for a solid ten seconds, before figuring out the true cause of that fortuitous spike.
The man himself said “obviously, there was a huge amount of frustration when people were trying unsuccessfully to log on and fill out their Census forms.
They were obviously searching for a trusted Australian brand and ended up at Sensis.com.au.”
It wasn’t just us plebs (more Latin!) who mucked up. When the ABC reported on the Census itself, the visual they chucked up featured a screenshot of the downed Sensis site. In another display of self-deprecation, Aunty had the guts to point out their own gaffe via Media Watch:
Oops wrong ‘census’ ABC News – that could be the problem (via @TonyYooAUS ) #mediawatch pic.twitter.com/v0OEKirHnX
— Media Watch (@ABCmediawatch) August 10, 2016
FWIW, it appears the actual Census site has now regained its composure, but feel free to give Sensis a burl in a show of homonymic solidarity.
