Public bid collection freshness

Name: Public bid collection freshness, release 2026-11-01-r2
Creator: VelocityBids
Published: 2026-11-01

How soon after a buyer posts a bid we first see it, overall and by state, and how many of our sources produced a new bid recently. A measure of our collection speed.

By Colton HeilRelease 2026-11-01-r2Snapshot taken November 1, 2026

How soon we first see a bid, August 3 to November 1, 2026

Median days from posting to our first sighting

5.2 days

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 8,502 cleared bids with a usable posting date more than a day before first sighting
Left out: 15,471 of 23,973 cleared bids could not be timed: 8,937 have no posting date, 4,855 were posted before we began collecting their source, 353 carry a posting date after we first saw them, and 1,326 have a posting date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from it
Type: Observed

Days from the buyer's posting date to the day we first saw the bid, for bids posted after we began collecting that source and more than a day before we first saw them. It measures our collection speed, not the buyer.

Cohort: cleared US state and local bids.

Share of bids first seen within 2 days of posting

21.4%

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 8,502 cleared bids with a usable posting date more than a day before first sighting
Left out: 15,471 of 23,973 cleared bids could not be timed: 8,937 have no posting date, 4,855 were posted before we began collecting their source, 353 carry a posting date after we first saw them, and 1,326 have a posting date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from it
Type: Observed

Cohort: cleared US state and local bids.

Share of bids first seen within 7 days of posting

63.7%

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 8,502 cleared bids with a usable posting date more than a day before first sighting
Left out: 15,471 of 23,973 cleared bids could not be timed: 8,937 have no posting date, 4,855 were posted before we began collecting their source, 353 carry a posting date after we first saw them, and 1,326 have a posting date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from it
Type: Observed

Cohort: cleared US state and local bids.

Share of cleared sources with a new bid in the last 30 days

67.2%

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 2,951 cleared sources
Left out: Sources with no cleared bid in the window are not counted.
Type: Observed

Cleared sources that had bids due in the window, and at least one bid we first saw in the 30 days before the snapshot.

Cohort: cleared US state and local bids.

The median bid was first seen 5.2 days after the buyer posted it, across 8,502 timed bids. The 75th percentile was 9.5 days and the 90th percentile was 15.6 days.

A posting date within a day of our first sighting may have been inferred from when we found the bid, so these figures leave out the 1,326 bids with one. Keeping them, 9,828 bids can be timed and the median is 4.1 days. The table below sets the two side by side. The second row is a sensitivity check and not the headline.

This measures our collection, not the buyer. It tells you how long a bid can sit before it shows up in what we hold, which is how long a tool that relies on us would be behind the buyer.

By state, the median runs from 3.4 days in Missouri (360 timed bids) to 9.0 days in North Carolina (668 timed bids).

Among 2,951 cleared sources with bids in the window, the newest bid of the median source was first seen 18.3 days before the snapshot.

Which cleared bids can be timed

Cleared bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026, by whether they can be timed
Outcome	Cleared bids	Share
Timed: posted after we began collecting the source, and more than a day before first sighting	8,502	35.5%
Posted within a day of first sighting, so the date may have been inferred	1,326	5.5%
Dated after we first saw the bid	353	1.5%
Posted before we began collecting the source	4,855	20.3%
No posting date	8,937	37.3%
All cleared bids	23,973	100%

Every cleared bid is in exactly one row, so the rows add up to the total. The first row is the sample for every timing figure on this page.

The same measure on two rules

Days from posting to first sighting on two rules, bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Rule	Timed bids	Median (days)	75th percentile (days)	90th percentile (days)	Seen within 2 days	Seen within 7 days
Posted more than a day before first sighting (headline)	8,502	5.2	9.5	15.6	21.4%	63.7%
Sensitivity: same-day dates kept, posted on or before first sighting	9,828	4.1	8.6	14.6	32.0%	68.6%

A bid is timed when its posting date is on or before our first sighting, so a date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from when we found the bid, is kept. Release 2026-11-01 headlined these figures. They are not the headline here.

How long the delay runs

Days from posting to our first sighting

Each bar is the number of days after the buyer posted a bid that we first saw it, for bids posted more than a day before we saw them.

Median5.2 days
75th percentile9.5 days
90th percentile15.6 days

Bars run from 0 to 20 days.

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 8,502 cleared bids with a usable posting date more than a day before our first sighting
Left out: 79,878 of 103,851 rows in the window were left out by the release rules. 15,471 of 23,973 cleared bids could not be timed: 8,937 have no posting date, 4,855 were posted before we began collecting their source, 353 carry a posting date after we first saw them, and 1,326 have a posting date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from it
Type: Observed

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By state

Median days to first sighting, by state

Each bar is the median number of days between a buyer's posting date and our first sighting, for one state, on bids posted more than a day before we saw them.

Missouri3.4 days360 bids
South Carolina3.9 days1,150 bids
Michigan4.3 days453 bids
New York4.3 days169 bids
Colorado4.7 days216 bids
Tennessee5.0 days199 bids
Florida5.1 days1,141 bids
Hawaii5.1 days370 bids
Virginia5.1 days249 bids
Arizona5.3 days158 bids
Illinois5.3 days188 bids
Texas5.4 days316 bids
Ohio5.5 days171 bids
California5.7 days666 bids
Kentucky6.4 days217 bids
New Jersey7.3 days287 bids
Louisiana8.0 days229 bids
North Carolina9.0 days668 bids

Bars run from 0 to 9 days.

Date: bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Sample: 7,207 cleared bids in the 18 states with at least 150 timed bids
Left out: 79,878 of 103,851 rows in the window were left out by the release rules. 15,471 of 23,973 cleared bids could not be timed: 8,937 have no posting date, 4,855 were posted before we began collecting their source, 353 carry a posting date after we first saw them, and 1,326 have a posting date within a day of first sighting, which may have been inferred from it
Type: Observed

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<iframe src="https://www.velocitybids.ai/data/embed/lag-by-state" title="Median days to first sighting, by state" width="100%" height="2242" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:760px"></iframe>

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Median days from posting to first sighting, by state, August 3 to November 1, 2026
State	Timed bids	Median days to first sighting
Missouri	360	3.4 days
South Carolina	1,150	3.9 days
Michigan	453	4.3 days
New York	169	4.3 days
Colorado	216	4.7 days
Tennessee	199	5.0 days
Florida	1,141	5.1 days
Hawaii	370	5.1 days
Virginia	249	5.1 days
Arizona	158	5.3 days
Illinois	188	5.3 days
Texas	316	5.4 days
Ohio	171	5.5 days
California	666	5.7 days
Kentucky	217	6.4 days
New Jersey	287	7.3 days
Louisiana	229	8.0 days
North Carolina	668	9.0 days

A state appears only when it has at least 150 timed bids. The rest are not published. The CSV also gives each state on the sensitivity rule.

How this is measured

A bid is timed only when its posting date precedes our first sighting by more than a day, the rule the response-window figures use, and falls after we began collecting its source. Earlier ones would show our start date and not our speed.
A posting date within a day of our first sighting may have been inferred from when we found the bid and not given by the source, and a date after our first sighting cannot be the day the buyer posted a bid we had already seen. Both are left out of the headline, and the sensitivity row shows the figures with the within-a-day dates kept.
The source share counts a cleared source as recent when we first saw at least one of its bids in the look-back window.

A source is cleared only if no named exclusion applies and its listing host's robots.txt permits its listing URL. A row is cleared only if its source is cleared and its own posting URL is permitted. Unknown means excluded.
Only bids with a verified United States location are counted. 11,687 rows that passed every other test were left out because their country could not be verified.
Repeat captures of one posting are counted once.
The exact rule
Among rows that pass every other test, the earliest first-seen row is kept for each normalized title, due timestamp and posting URL; later captures of the same posting are removed as repeat_capture; a tie on first-seen goes to the lower bid id. The title is compared in lower case with punctuation and spacing ignored.
Same title and due date, different address: Not merged. Generic titles recur across unrelated buyers, and a different posting URL is the only evidence that two rows are different solicitations. These rows stay in every figure. The sensitivity shows the window median if each such group were counted once.

Rows left out, step by step, for bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026
Step	Rows left out	Rows remaining
Rows in the snapshot window		103,851
Marked as a duplicate of another bid	2,299	101,552
No record of which source it came from	101	101,451
From a reseller or aggregator	28,233	73,218
From a federal or foreign notice feed	5,549	67,669
From a portal whose terms limit how its data is used	692	66,977
Behind a login	5	66,972
From a host not cleared for republication	10,823	56,149
Listing page not permitted by robots.txt	1,732	54,417
Listing page robots.txt could not be checked	9,089	45,328
Posting page not permitted by robots.txt	2,204	43,124
Posting page robots.txt could not be checked	3,005	40,119
Country not verified as the United States	11,687	28,432
A repeat capture of a posting already counted	4,459	23,973

Download the data

These files are the release these figures come from. They are plain CSV and JSON, they sit at fixed addresses, and each one is listed with its size and a hash in manifest.json, so you can check that what you hold is what we published.

manifest.jsonJSON
Release date, code revision, rule version, row counts in and out, and a hash of every file
exclusions.jsonJSON, 4 KB
Rows left out at each step, with the reason, and the sensitivity checks
figures.jsonJSON, 8 KB
Every headline figure with its date, sample size, cohort and what it measures
freshness-by-state.csvCSV, 614 B
Median days from posting to first sighting by state, on the strict rule and on the looser rule
freshness.jsonJSON, 5 KB
Days to first sighting, with every bid not timed counted under a reason, the looser rule as a labelled sensitivity, source recency and the state breakdown

Use and cite this data

You can copy a table, embed a chart or build on the files without asking and without linking back. Keep the date and sample size with the figure, because a number without them can be read the wrong way.

Cite as: VelocityBids, Public Bid Access Observatory, release 2026-11-01-r2, November 1, 2026. https://www.velocitybids.ai/data/collection-freshness

If a figure is wrong, we publish a new release with a dated correction note and leave the old one at its address. To report one, write to hello@velocitybids.ai.

Keep reading

Public bid document access
75.8% of 7,453 open bids from cleared sources had a document we downloaded, as of November 1, 2026.
Public bid portal fragmentation
2,951 cleared sources posted bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026, and the five largest named platforms held 42.5% of those bids; 25.0% sat on no tracked platform.
Public bid response windows
The median cleared bid gave 23.6 days from posting to due date, across 13,116 bids due August 3 to November 1, 2026.
How we count public bids
How to find public bids that fit your business