Attribute ranking order

This article explains how the order of attributes in the searchableAttributes array impacts search result relevancy.

In most datasets, some fields are more relevant to search than others. A title, for example, might be more meaningful to a movie search than its overview or its release_date.

When searchableAttributes is using its default value, [*], all fields carry the same weight.

If you manually configure the searchable attributes list, attributes that appear early in the array are more important when calculating search result relevancy.

Example

[
  "title",
  "overview",
  "release_date"
]

With the above attribute ranking order, matching words found in the title field would have a higher impact on relevancy than the same words found in overview or release_date. If you searched for “1984”, for example, results like Michael Radford’s film “1984” would be ranked higher than movies released in the year 1984.

Attribute ranking order and nested objects

By default, nested fields share the same weight as their parent attribute. Use dot notation to set different weights for attributes in nested objects:

[
  "title",
  "review.critic",
  "overview",
  "review.user"
]

With the above ranking order, review.critic becomes more important than its sibling review.user when calculating a document’s ranking score.

The attribute rule’s position in rankingRules determines how the results are sorted. Meaning, if attribute is at the bottom of the ranking rules list, it will have almost no impact on your search results.