Photo search using popular tag with Flickr API sometimes returns empty results

Question

Every now and then I call the Flickr API to do a photo search using tags, and it returns 0 results for some tags while returning plenty of results for others. All the tags are major popular tags so the chances of there actually being no results is nil.

For example, right now, when I try a search for "actor" (&tags=actor) I get no results. But if I try a search for "war" (&tags=war) I get the usual long list of results. When this situation pops up, it stays in place sometimes for hours and then just magically clears up.

Has anybody else seen this syndrome via the Flickr API? If so, did you come up with a way to clean it up?

Here are the two REST queries I am using. I'm showing the empty response for "actor", but left out the full response for "war" for brevity purposes.

http://flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=...hidden...&user_id=&tags=actor&tag_mode=&text=&min_upload_date=&max_upload_date=&min_taken_date=&max_taken_date=&license=&extras=&per_page=&page=&sort=

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><rsp stat="ok"><photos page="1" pages="0" perpage="100" total="0" /></rsp>

http://flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=...hidden...&user_id=&tags=war&tag_mode=&text=&min_upload_date=&max_upload_date=&min_taken_date=&max_taken_date=&license=&extras=&per_page=&page=&sort=

{full list of photos returned}

Answer 1

Apparently the flickr search functionality is bugged at the moment and flickr is working on a fix.