In versions 5.3.0 and above of CM, the search was enhancement with a few new nice features. One of these is relevancy. By using relevency you are ensuring that the most relevant search results for a search term always appear at the top.

You can convey relevancy of a particular search result item to users of your website by turning on the relevancy indicator. This then places a star rating next to each item, which 5 stars being the most relevant and zero being the least relevant.

To turn on relevancy, there is generally an article called "Search" located in the folder "Site Layout" -> "Search". This article contains a search element. When you edit this element you should see the option "Sort by" under "Configure Search Results Display". Select "Relevancy" from the drop down list and tick the option "Show Relevancy Indicator" a bit further down.

Then save and checkin the article and test the search box.

(If you wish to turn off relevancy or the relevancy indicator then find the same article above and just untick or change the appropriate setting)

Hi David,

There is also an option under "Management" > "General Site Details" > "Advanced Search Settings" > "Article Sort Order"

Is this the default for all searches and is overridden by the option you described?
Also, how is relevancy calculated?

Hi Hilary,

In response to your first question, there are 2 types of searches available in Community Manager:

1. Basic search. This is set up using a search article element and the rules for this search are configured in the actual article element itself. This type of search would generally be a search box available on your home page. 
2. Advanced search. This is an advanced version of the basic search which you can get to by linking to the Site Element called "Advanced Search" (it links to a page called articlesearchpublicadv.aspx). What the user can can do here is narrow down sections of the site to search and control the timeframe etc of what they want to see. 

The "Management" > "General Site Details" > "Advanced Search Settings" > "Article Sort Order" field, in fact all the fields listed under that section, are used to control the sort order only for the advanced search. Setting similar options for the basic search needs to be done in the individual search article element.

In response to your second question, search relevancy is calculated in the following order:

1. Highest relevancy/ranking is given to any items that have been set up using the Best Best function ("Management Tools" --> "Best Bets")
2. Search term appears in the article/event/document name
3. Article/event/document has been tagged with a taxonomy item which is the same as the search term  
4. Search term appears in article/event/document content. SQL ranking is used to calculate this relevancy/ranking value, basically it looks at howmany times the search term appears in the content and ranks it accordingly.

If an exact match is found on the search term in 1-4 above then it will be assigned a 5 star rating, and the items will be displayed in the order of 1-4.   

Also, if there are multiple search terms then the first one will get the highest ranking, last one will get the lowest ranking. Secondary search terms will generally be assigned a 4.5 or lower rating.

Regards,

Tracey.

Brilliant information!

Thanks Tracey