It appears that the Recovery.gov search engine improved over the weekend (my guess is that the indexing service took a while to organize all the data). When I search recipient reports for "alpha," "Alpha Building Foundation Corp" still isn't found, but some 110 results are displayed for other awards containing the word "alpha." And when I search for "Savannah River," "Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC" is returned, unlike what I was seeing on Friday.

But the engine still has its quirks. For example, I want to find awards given to Terracon Consultants, Inc. When I enter "Terracon" in the search box, the engine tells me that I really wanted to search for "terra con," and the engine automatically searches recipient reports for "terra con," unsurprisingly finding nothing. However, a search for "Terracon" in "All of of Recovery.gov" yields five hits. If I enter the entire search term and enclose it in quotes (e.g., "Terracon Consultants, Inc."), I see that there 15 results in recipient reports. Strange behavior.

Of course, a Recovery.gov with a partially functioning search is much better than one without, and we're likely to see improvements in the next few days as the indexing mechanism continues to churn through the data. (Assuming my suspicion about the indexer is right.)

I still think the results could use some work, though. And again, this may happen in the coming months as the Recovery tech team moves away from just making sure the data get up on the site.