The previous test code asserted that the correct call was output by pyelasticsearch. (Of course, since I got the URL wrong in both places, the test passed spuriously.) I'm trying to hit ES less during the test suite for speed, ease of dev, and stability of testing as ES keeps changing its API (though, of course this has its disadvantages in terms of verifying compatibility with new versions). The new tests you've added don't actually assert that the update happened as intended, so I'd prefer to go back to the previous philosophy, just correcting the URL.