Relevancy Tuning & Boosting

Relevancy Tuning in Search

SearchBlox supports relevance tuning of search results through URL parameters in the search query. Relevance can be tuned with standard and custom fields boosting.

Standard Field Boosting

Standard Fields (title, description, URL, keywords, date recency, URL length and clicklog) can be boosted to tune the relevancy of search results

ParameterDescriptionDefault valueRange of valuesExample
tuneEnables or disables relevance tuningtruetrue or falsehttp://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune=false
tune.0Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document title 51 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.0=50
tune.1Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document description 31 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.1=50
tune.2Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in keywords meta field21 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.2=50
tune.3Weight used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document url 51 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.3=50
tune.4Documents within 180 days are ranked higher than older documents. This sets the time period (in days) after which the relevance of documents decreases based on the document last modified date180Number of Days
You can give any value between 1 and 1000
http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.4=30

Number of days = 30
tune.5Shorter urls will be ranked higher than longer urls based on length 101 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.5=50
tune.6More the number of clicks made to the result, more will be the relevancy101 to 100http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.6=50

It is also possible to boost multiple parameters while boosting as in the following examples:

To boost description and boost documents lesser than 30 days:
http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.1=50&tune.4=30

To boost keywords and URL:
http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.2=50&tune.3=30

Similarly, different combinations of tuning can be used based on user requirement. To boost results which have been viewed by the users and boost title
http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=time&tune.6=50&tune.0=30

Custom Field Boosting

Custom field boosting can be used by the user to boost fields such as metadata, file properties and other custom fields that are indexed in SearchBlox.

ParameterDescriptionDefault valueRange of ValuesExample
tune.fieldProvides the ability to facet on any fieldNoAny standard or custom field including term, number or date fields&tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=square
tune.field.weightWeight to be used to increase relevance of document if search query appears in document custom field. This is for text fieldNo1 to 100&tune.field=author&t.author.value=john&t.author.weight=100
tune.field.factorThis factor is applicable for numerical field.
Please make sure to add the custom numerical field in your mapping.json.
No1 to 100&tune.field=size&t.size.factor=10&t.size.modifier=reciprocal
tune.field.modifierThis factor is applicable for numerical fields and has to be provided with tune.field.factor
Nonone - 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
},

Collection Level Boosting

Boosting can be done at the collection level where results of one collection can be given more relevance or boosting over another. For this, the boost value in the collection settings can be specified within the range 1 - 9999. Collection has to be cleared and re-indexed after updating the boosting setting to take the effect.

497

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:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=library&filter=library%20AND%20(contenttype:html%20OR%20*)

https://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=library&filter=(library%20OR%20title:library)%20AND%20(contenttype:html%20OR%20*)

Changing Relevance internally

Relevance value can be provided internally by editing ../webapps/searchblox/WEB-INF/relevance.yml
The content of yml file will be as follows, the user can provide the weight as per their requirement.

title: 5
description: 3
keywords: 2
url: 5
urllength : 10
lastmodified: 180
click: 10

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

Disabling Relevancy tuning

You can disable relevancy tuning provided based on the preceding section by providing &tune=false in the search servlet URL
example: http://localhost:8080/searchblox/servlet/SearchServlet?query=apple&tune=false