Search Tips: how to get better results

Most failed searches fail for a small number of reasons: the wrong words, the wrong source, or a source that simply does not hold the record. This page explains how this site's tools match what you type, how to search the open web yourself (this site has no general web search), and how to keep what you find checkable.

Jump to: Before you search · Contracts and grants · Companies and people · News · Searching the web yourself · Public records · Private funding and political money · Verifying and recording

Before you search

• Write down what you already know: names and spellings, places, dates, amounts, and any ID numbers. An ID is worth more than a name.
• Search on identifiers when you have them. Useful ones: a federal award or contract number (PIID), a company's UEI (federal) or CIK (SEC) or LEI, a court docket number, a licence number, a website address. They match exactly; names do not.
• Start narrow, then widen. One specific fact first (a company plus a place). If that finds nothing, drop one word at a time.
• Try the name variants. The legal name versus the brand, with and without “Inc” or “LLC”, former names after a merger, nicknames, alternate spellings and transliterations. A person may appear with a middle initial in one record and without in another.
• “Nothing found” is not “nothing exists.” Every source covers only part of the picture. When one comes up empty, the next question is which other source would hold it.

Contracts and grants

The Contracts and grants search reads USAspending.gov, the official record of federal spending.

• Use 1 to 3 key words in the topic box, not a sentence. The topic is matched as one exact phrase inside the award's own description. “border wall” works; “who built the border wall in Texas” can never match.
• Write like an agency clerk, not a reporter. Descriptions are short, in capitals, and full of shorthand (“REPAIR EAST WING BLDG 401”). Try the plain form of the word, because demolition and demolished may not match each other. Try synonyms: renovate, repair, construct, replace.
• Use the filters instead of extra words. Agency and state are exact filters; putting “Texas” in the topic box only finds descriptions that contain that word.
• The company box matches names. A parent company and its subsidiaries are separate entries, so search the main word of the name (“Lockheed”) as well as the full legal name.
• Read the amount carefully. It is the award total USAspending reports. It can include earlier years and options, and it is not necessarily money actually paid.
• New awards can take a while to appear, and some work is never listed as a federal award at all: state and local contracts, privately funded projects, classified work, and subcontracts, which this search does not cover (the company that got the prime contract may have hired the one you want). For open bids that have not been awarded, use SAM.gov.
• Grants are separate from contracts. Switch the type on the search form; a grant will never show up in a contracts search.

Try: border wall Defense contracts in Texas water grants

Companies and people

• Use Investigate to see identity, federal money, political money, news and website history for a name in one place.
• Names collide. Many organizations and people share a name. Before you connect two records, find something that ties them together: an address, an ID number, an officer's name, a website.
• The registry numbers are the way to be sure. Wikidata often lists a company's SEC number and LEI, and the federal record lists its UEI. The same company should match across them.
• Follow the company outward. Its state business registration (see State Resources) lists officers and a registered agent; court records show lawsuits; its official website's history (Wayback Machine) shows what it used to say.
• Wikidata is edited by volunteers and can be wrong or out of date. Treat it as a starting point and confirm at the primary source.

News

• A headline is a claim, not verification. The news search returns headlines, outlets and dates so you can see who reported what and when; read the article, then look for a second independent source.
• Search for a name plus one context word (“Acme Corp” plus “contract”), not a sentence. Multi-word searches are matched as an exact phrase.
• Widen the date range before you conclude nothing was reported, and remember that local outlets and trade press often report contracts long before national outlets.
• When the main news service is slow or busy, the site falls back to The Guardian and The New York Times only. That is two outlets' reporting, not worldwide coverage, and the result says so.

Searching the web yourself

• Try more than one engine. Results differ enough that a second one often finds what the first buried.
• Check the date on every result, and whether the page is the original source or a copy of it.
• Save what matters. Pages change or disappear. Use the archived pages check, and save the page to the Internet Archive yourself if it is important.

Public records

• Pick the right level of government. Federal records are federal; a city contract or a state licence is in that state's or city's own records. State Resources lists them by state.
• If it is not published, ask for it. Federal agencies answer FOIA requests; states have their own public-records laws. Make the request specific: a name, an award or contract number, a date range. The chat assistant can help you draft the wording.
• Historical documents are in the National Archives search, which holds what has been digitized, not the full physical archive.

When it isn't a federal award: private funding, gifts and political money

Federal award databases record money the government spends. They do not record privately funded work, gifts, or political spending, which live in other records. An empty result in a contracts search is often the first sign of that, not a dead end.

• “Not in the federal record” is a fact; “improper” is a judgment. Privately funded work on government property can be authorized, questionable or unlawful depending on the statute and the facts, and that is decided by courts, Congress and agencies. Report what the records show and let named sources describe the legal question.
• Find how the money entered. Ask what agreement, gift acceptance or authority allowed it, and who received the money: an agency, or a nonprofit or fund set up for the purpose. That paperwork is the equivalent of a contract file. Court filings often describe it, because the parties have to.
• Nonprofits file public tax returns showing revenue, officers, and the grants and payments they made (search them on Political Money). They usually do not show who gave to them.
• Political committees file with the FEC. PACs, super PACs and party committees report who gave to them. For a committee, this site shows only the largest single gifts (from $10,000 up, and you can pick a range: $10,000 to $50,000, $50,001 to $150,000, or over $150,000), because the question worth asking is who funds it, not who the small donors are.
• Follow the conduit. When a nonprofit or an LLC gives to a super PAC, the record names the conduit, not the people behind it. Learn what you can about the conduit itself: its officers, address, registered agent, what else it gave to, and when. Do not guess who is behind it. Note what is unknown.
• Time and sequence are evidence too: when a gift was made, when a decision followed. Present the sequence and let readers judge; a donation followed by an outcome is not proof of a connection.
• Sources this site does not search: lobbying disclosures (lda.gov), foreign-agent registrations (FARA), state campaign finance, and officials' financial disclosures. Search them directly.

Verifying and recording what you find

• Two independent sources. One database entry, one headline or one social post is a lead. Look for a primary document, or a second source that did not simply copy the first.
• Record where and when. Every result has a Copy citation button that produces the source, the address and today's date; each card can also download its results as a spreadsheet (CSV). Nothing is stored on the site: the file is made in your own browser.
• Note what you searched, not just what you found. Keep the exact words and filters you used. It shows others how to repeat the search and is the record of what came back empty.
• Expect gaps and delays. Databases lag behind events; a missing record may simply not have been reported yet.
• Mind your own footprint. This site does not store your searches, but each search runs from this server against outside services, and those services see the words you typed (not who you are). Do not put anything into any tool that you are not comfortable sharing with an outside service.

Investigate a name Go to the search tools