Relevance Tuning

Relevancy Tuning in Search

Relevancy Tuning in SearchBlox allows you to control how search results are ranked and displayed. You can adjust ranking based on content type, metadata, or custom fields, ensuring the most useful and relevant results appear first for users.

Key Features

Pre-Made Templates:
Use built-in tuning templates to quickly adjust relevance for common content types.
Custom Templates:
Create and save your own relevance settings as templates based on your organization’s specific content needs.
Preview Tuned Results:
Preview search results after applying tuning to ensure the changes work as expected.
Field Boosting:
Improve ranking by boosting important fields such as title, metadata, or custom fields.
URL Parameters:
Apply relevancy tuning dynamically by using URL parameters in the search query.

How to Use Relevancy Tuning:

Access Relevancy Tuning Settings:
Go to the Relevancy Tuning section in the SearchBlox Dashboard.
Choose a Template:
Select a pre-made template or create a custom template based on your needs.
Adjust Field Boosting:
Set boost values for fields such as title, description, or metadata to control their impact on search ranking.
Preview Results:
Use the preview option to check how the tuned search results will appear.
Save and Apply:
Save the settings and apply the tuning to your search interface.

Standard Field Boosting

Standard search fields such as title, description, URL, keywords, date recency, URL length, and click logs can be boosted to fine-tune how search results are ranked in SearchBlox.

Below is a detailed explanation of each tuning parameter, what it does, and how it can be used to improve search relevance.

Parameter	Description	Default value	Range of values	Example
tune	Enables or disables relevance tuning	true	true or false	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune=false
Title(tune.0)	Increases the relevance of a document when the search term appears in the title	25	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.0=50
Description(tune.1)	Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document description	15	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.1=50
Keywords(tune.2)	Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in keywords meta field	25	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.2=50
Keywords in URL(tune.3)	Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document url	10	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.3=50
Last modified date(tune.4)	Documents within 180 days are ranked higher than older documents. Gives preference to documents modified within a recent number of days. The relevance decreases for older documents.last modified date	1	Number of Days You can give any value between 1 and 1000	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.4=30 Number of days = 30
URL length(tune.5)	Shorter URLs will be ranked higher than longer URLs based on length	1	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.5=50
Click weight(tune.6)	More the number of clicks made to the result, more will be the relevancy	5	1 to 100	https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.6=50

SearchBlox allows you to apply multiple boosts together using URL parameters, giving you more control over how search results are ranked. This flexibility helps you fine-tune results based on specific requirements.

1.Boosting Description and Recent Documents:
You can boost the description field and prioritize documents that were updated within the last 30 days using a single search URL. Use the following URL:

https\://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.1=50&tune.4=30

tune.1=50: Boosts the description field by a factor of 50.
tune.4=30: Boosts documents that are less than 30 days old.

Boosting Keywords and URL:

To increase the importance of the keywords field and the URL field in search results, you can use this URL:

https\://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.2=50&tune.3=30

tune.2=50: Boosts the keywords field by a factor of 50.
tune.3=30: Boosts the URL field by a factor of 30.

Boosting Viewed Results and Title:

If you want documents that users click on often to appear higher, and also want the title field to be stronger, use this URL:

https\://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=time&tune.6=50&tune.0=30

tune.6=50: Boosts results that have been viewed by users.
tune.0=30: Boosts the title field by a factor of 30.

tune.0 Boosts the title field.
tune.1 Boosts the description field.
tune.2 Boosts the keywords field.
tune.3 Boosts the URL field.
tune.4 Boosts documents based on recency (e.g., less than 30 days old).
tune.6 Boosts results based on user views (popularity).

Custom Field Boosting

Custom Field Boosting lets you adjust the ranking of documents based on your own custom fields. These fields can include metadata, file properties, or any additional fields added to SearchBlox.

Parameter	Description	Default value	Range of Values	Example
tune.field	Provides the ability to facet on any field	No	Any standard or custom field including term, number or date fields	&tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=square
tune.field.weight	Weight to be used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document custom field. This is for text field	No	1 to 100	&tune.field=author&t.author.value=john&t.author.weight=100
tune.field.factor	This factor is applicable for numerical field. Please make sure to add the custom numerical field in your mapping.json.	No	1 to 100	&tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=reciprocal
tune.field.modifier	This factor is applicable for numerical fields and has to be provided with tune.field.factor	No	none - Do not apply any multiplier to the field value log - Take the logarithm of the field value log1p Add 1 to the field value and take the logarithm log2p - Add 2 to the field value and take the logarithm ln - Take the natural logarithm of the field value ln1p - Add 1 to the field value and take the natural logarithm ln2p - Add 2 to the field value and take the natural logarithm square - Square the field value (multiply it by itself) sqrt - Take the square root of the field value reciprocal - Reciprocate the field value, same as 1/x where x is the field’s value missing - Value used if the document doesn’t have that field. The modifier and factor are still applied to it as though it were read from the document.	To increase relevance larger documents tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=square square - If square is provided as modifier greater the field value greater the relevance To reduce the relevance of larger documents &tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=reciprocal reciprocal - If reciprocal is provided as modifier lower the field value greater the relevance

For a numerical field the mapping should be as shown in mapping.json or any other relevant file in SearchBlox.
"numfield": {
"type": "double",
"store": true,
"index": false
},

Manual Rank (or mRank)

Manual Rank allows you to force specific documents to appear at the top of the search results, regardless of the search query or other relevancy tuning settings. To use mRank correctly, you must adjust the sorting settings in the Relevancy Tuning preview window. Adding a rank requires additional sorting adjustments in the preview window to properly order the search parameters.

Search Level Boosting

Boosting can be done during Search by using ^ operator.

In the following example, software is given boost over test, so results with software will appear on top.
test software^100

In this example, the title field is given more boost over the keywords _field, so the results with the title _world will appear on top.
example, keywords:news title:world^500

Specific content types can be boosted by using the search query with the content type field.

example, library AND (contenttype:html OR *)

example, (library OR title:library) AND (contenttype:html OR *)

The search boosting query value can be passed through the filter param to avoid the user search term from being changed.

https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?query=library&filter=libraryAND(contenttype:htmlOR*)

https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?query=library&filter=(libraryORtitle:library)AND(contenttype:htmlOR*)

After making changes, please restart the build, reindex and then perform the search.

Disabling Relevancy tuning

Relevancy tuning can disabled provided based on the preceding section by providing &tune=false in the search servlet URL
Example:

https://localhost:8443/rest/v2/api/search?public=true&query=apple&tune=false