>>Search results ordering and ranking

Search results ordering and ranking

This article explains how you can change the order in which search results are displayed.

To change the settings with regards to ordering and ranking via Site configuration > Search settings > Ranking, Ordering and Latest.

Retrieving files

You can choose to retrieve Newer files first, or Older files first. All files get a unique 8 digit Infradox id, which is a number that is automatically incremented every time a new file is added. By default, newer files are files that were uploaded last and the system uses the Infradox id to determine the file age. Instead of using the unique Infradox Id, you can however use the “Creation date” metadata field to determine which files are newer. If you want this, then select the setting “Use metadata ‘creation date’ field to determine newer/older files”.

The order in which found files are displayed

The shortest search times are achieved if you don’t use Ranking, because the system will then simply return the found files in the order in which they are retrieved (as described above). With any of the Ranking options enabled, the system will retrieve the results from the Full text search server as described above, but the results are then re-ordered before being returned to the client. You can select the setting “Random order of search results” to change the order in which files are shown every time someone searches.

XS Ranking

If you enable XS Ranking, then the search results are ordered by files with the highest ranking number down to the lowest ranking number. Number 5 is the highest ranking number, and 1 is the lowest. Ranking number 0 means “unranked“, so those files will always be displayed last. There may of course be multiple files with the same ranking number, so within this order either newer or older files are shown first depending on what you have configured (i.e. Newer files first or Older files first) as explained above.

Note that you can configure default ranking values for your suppliers, which you can use to automatically rank files from specific suppliers higher or lower. It is also possible to create a data processing rule to automatically rank files based on e.g. words in the metadata. You can read more about this here: Data processing rules. To change the ranking of files while browsing the client facing pages, you’ll need to enable “Batch mode” in the admin toolbar. Each thumbnail will then display a bar with up to 5 stars that you can click to change the ranking. You can change the ranking value of multiple files at once by use of the Batch update dialog.

Custom ranking

If the default methods to not meet your requirements, a custom function can be created for you on the server. If you want search results ordered based on a formula that takes different values into account, then that’s possible. This is however not something you can do yourself, it will be created for you. Create a support ticket for further information.

Latest files

By default, the URL /latest will return x-files in the order that you have configured, i.e. Newest to Oldest or vice versa – and ranked according to your settings. You can however disable ranking for the “Latest” command with the setting “Disable ranking for Latest files” to retrieve the files without applying the ranking setting.
If you don’t want to use the default option, then select any of the other available options – e.g. Files uploaded today et cetera.

2018-12-06T16:11:42+01:00 December 6th, 2018|Categories: Configuration|Tags: , , |