New search tool for the legislative website!

During the website redesign in 2025, one of the most common criticisms of the site was the search feature. The search experience was frustrating for people to get relevant results, particularly for web pages and, at times, legislative documents. As a result, many visitors relied on external tools to locate content.

We've decided to release a modern search engine tailored to our content that can provide a more accurate, reliable, and user-friendly search experience.

The current search will remain in place alongside the new system throughout the 2026 Session.

The new search experience introduces several enhancements designed to improve usability and relevant results:

• A modern interface with a main search bar at the top and filters on the left side to further refine the search results if desired.
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• Like previous versions, our new search still allows you to search only the web pages or only the documents (PDF, Word, and HTML), but this one also has an “All content” option that searches across pages and documents together.
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• Searches entered into the search field in the top right corner of the website will search across all content by default.
• The option to bookmark and save search results for later.
• Search results can be ordered by relevance (the default), created date, or popularity.

We encourage you to explore the new search features and share feedback as both systems as they operate side-by-side. As a reminder, the current leg.wa.gov search feature will remain in place alongside the new search during 2026 Session. This allows you to continue using the version of search you’re most familiar with until after Session.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Legislative Information Center at support@leg.wa.gov