How Search Results Are Ranked
Search results are ranked according to relevance, by default.
There are several factors that determine relevance.
- How Term Frequency Factors in RelevanceThe number of times a query term (or its stemmed and case variant forms) appears in a searchable item has a large influence on the relevance ranking of the item. All other things being equal, items which contain more instances of a query term will rank higher than items containing fewer instances. This is known as term-frequency-based ranking.
- About Metadata (Field) WeightingBasic searches are performed across several document fields, and some fields are weighted higher than other fields, so that, for instance, a match on an object name ranks higher than a match on an object description. By default, the fields searched are name, description, and full-text content.
- How Phrases and Proximity Factor in RelevanceIn basic search, Bag of Words mode employs special relevancy ranking features which emphasize phrase and proximity matches with the search phrase, even though the user did not employ quotes or proximity operators.
