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Site Search Prioritization

  • Updated:

Elastic-search takes all our data, cleans it (stemming, HTML stripping, etc), then puts it into an inverted index where content is separated and organized.

 

The search uses 3 fields:

  • Title
  • Tags
  • _all.
    • The _all field is essentially a very large string made out of an item’s inverted index (non-module widget content, documents, module items, etc.).
    • You "hit" on this data based on occurrence and relevancy metrics.
    • It also searches titles and tags, and if those "hit," it carries more weight (see Boosts) than hitting on the ALL string.

 

Search Result Weights  

The only thing that receives a weighted factor (or a boost) in search results are Keywords. The rest of the results are based on the frequency of the search term.

If you would like to add a weighted factor to the Title or other additional fields, please read how to Configure Boost Fields Search.

 

The search tool looks at everything in a long string and calculates how many times a term is referenced in content areas, descriptions, widgets, (etc). If a term is also in a title or keywords then it shows higher in the results.

  • Boosts:
    • Title = 0 By Default
    • Tags/keywords = 1.5
  • Decayed modules:
    • Activities
    • Agenda Center
    • AlertCenter
    • Archive
    • Bids
    • Blog
    • Calendar
    • CityPolls
    • CivicAlerts
    • Community Connection
    • Community Voice
    • MediaCenter
    • Photo Gallery
    • Real Estate Locator
    • Notes:
      • Pages do not decay.
      • Elastic Guide for Decay Functions
      • We use an exponential decay
      • We are at:
        • "Scale": "21d"
          • "Offset": "21d"
          • "Decay": 0.9
      • Decays use different dates in the modules
        • Calendar decays on Event Date, Agenda Center on Meeting Date

 

Decay Date  

Items in Document Center, Pages, Facilities, Form Center, Forms, Staff Directory, FAQs, and Notify Me do not have a decay date. We believe it would actually hinder best search results if we said after x amount of time, this expires from showing in results. The reason being is that it is quite possible that a document from 2010 is still the most accurate and relevant item that a site user needs. So, the date is not a factor for search results in regard to the modules mentioned earlier.

Feedback About the Article

Let us know what was helpful or not helpful about the article below.

3 comments

Date Votes
  • Jennifer Balonek

    Please explain the term "decay"

    0
  • Becca Drake

    Hi Jennifer,

    Decay is a parameter that defines how search results are scored. If the item has not been updated, it will have more "decay" and appear lower on the results list. Does that help?

    Thank you,
    Your Help Center Team

    1
  • Michael Tjoelker

    If I search general terms like "bids", "documents", "agendas"/"meetings", "news", "calendar": I would expect the general module frontend pages to come up in search first. 

    It doesn't seem to work this way by default. How would we go about setting that up? Thank you!

    1

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