Elasticsearch - Why am I not getting the same search results after updating a document?

Question

Here's what I'm doing:

First, I make a search and get some documents

curl -XPOST index/type/_search
{
   "query" : {
      "match_all": {}
   },
   "size": 10
}

Then, I'm updating one of the documents resulted in the search

curl -XPOST index/type/_id/_update
{
   "doc" : {
      "some_field" : "Some modification goes here."
   }
}

And finally, I'm doing exactly the same search as above.

But the curious thing is that I get all the previous documents, except the updated one. Why is it no longer among the documents in the search?

Thank you!

Are you able to get it back using the _id? curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/index/type/_id' — jay, Oct 05 '16 at 17:51
What happens if you perform a refresh between the operations? https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-refresh.html — deathyr, Oct 06 '16 at 03:28
@jay yes I can. but the _id field isn't changing, if you're thinking at that — Victor Cordos, Oct 07 '16 at 11:02
@deathyr I also made the update call with the refresh property on true, the results are the same. — Victor Cordos, Oct 07 '16 at 11:08

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '16 at 04:48

Since you're not sorting your documents, they are sorted by score. Your modification might have changed the document score after which the documents are sorted by default.

And since you're only taking the first 10 documents, you have no guarantee that your new document will come back in those 10 documents.

Elasticsearch - Why am I not getting the same search results after updating a document?

1 Answers1