Legistalker: What Happens In DC Doesn't Have To Stay In DC

Legistalker: What Happens In DC Doesn’t Have To Stay In DC

Jul 1, 2009 at 12:19pm ET by Matt McGee

As a nation, the US seems to be more interested in politics than we’ve been in a long time. Voter turnout in last year’s presidential election was 61%, the first time it passed 60% in 40 years. When President Obama was inaugurated in January, Google reported spikes in search activity. Yahoo said that inaugural search trends were the result of “a large, internet-savvy constituency who demand more from the internet than they did four years ago.”

But now that the election and inauguration are distant memories, how do we search today for news about the important decisions being made in Washington, DC? How do we find out what our local representatives are saying and, most importantly, how they’re voting? Traditional media reports on some of what happens in Congress, and of course there’s information on the official web sites of your local representatives. Some lawmakers use Twitter and YouTube to communicate with constituents. But there’s also a new way to search and find out what’s happening in Washington — a new political search engine of sorts called Legistalker.

Just launched in April, Legistalker covers all US legislators, tracking things like their appearances in traditional news, their Twitter feeds, and videos they upload to YouTube. Legistalker says its database is updated every 20 seconds. You can search for a specific legislator, or see all lawmakers for a particular state or zip code. When you reach the profile page of an individual Congressperson, Legistalker adds tabs to see the person’s votes and even a tag cloud showing the most frequently used words in his/her remarks on the Congressional floor.

To make searching easier in the future, you can add any legislator to a “watch list” — and this doesn’t require creating an account or logging in to the site. (It doesn’t even offer accounts/logins, for that matter.)

All in all, Legistalker is a compelling way to search and find out what’s happening in Washington, DC.

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land's Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. See more articles by Matt McGee

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http://www.twitter.com/ogletree ogletree

I don’t really get how this is a story. It seems more like a paid post.
Matt McGee

Nope, not a paid post and I have no connections to Legistalker. Just seemed like an interesting political search site/tool to me. Sorry if you don’t agree.
http://www.twitter.com/ogletree ogletree

It may not be but there really is not way to know if it is or not. If I wanted to pay somebody to do a post for me I would link them this post and tell them to do it exactly like that. Many paid posts read exactly like this. The post is very different than any other post on SEL. It reads like a sales pitch for that website. Why did you not show other websites that provide the same service.