Odd message from the Congress.org search alert this AM:
Here’s the search I created back in June, 2016:
My probably inaccurate recall at the moment was I was searching for some quote from the impeachment of Bill Clinton and was too lazy to specify a term of congress, hence:
all congresses – searching for Clinton within five words, impeachment
Fairly trivial search that produced 261 “hits.”
I set the search alert more to explore the search options than any expectation of different future results.
Imagine my surprise to find that all congresses – searching for Clinton within five words, impeachment performed today, results in 0 “hits.”
Suspecting some internal changes to the search interface, I re-entered the search today and got 0 “hits.”
Other saved searches with radically different search results as of today?
This is not, repeat not, the result of some elaborate conspiracy to assist Secretary Clinton in her bid for the presidency.
I do think something fundamental has gone wrong with searching at Congress.gov and it needs to be fixed.
This is an illustration of why Wikileaks, DC Leaks and other data sites should provide easy to access downloads in bulk of their materials.
Providing search interfaces to document collections is a public service, but document collections or access to them can change in ways not transparent to search users. Such as demonstrated by the CIA removing documents previously delivered to the Senate.
Petition Wikileaks, DC Leaks and other data sites for easy bulk downloads.
That will ensure the “evidence” will not shift under your feet and the availability of more sophisticated means of analysis than brute-force search.
Update: The changing from http:// to https:// by the congress.gov site, trashed my save query and using http:// to re-perform the same search.
Using https:// returns the same 261 search results.
What your experience with other saved searches at congress.gov?