It’s important to note that the ordering of assets at the same level in the tree affects the way in which they are applied. Consider a tree that organizes search configurations by segment:
For site visitors who fall into two segments, such as News Junkie and Subscribes to Wall Street Journal, the first search configuration that appears in the tree – News Junkie – is used.
Consider a tree with multiple search configurations and search configuration folders:
Consider an English visitor who is part of the Subscribes to the New York Times segment. ATG Search locates the correct search configuration by beginning at the top of the tree with the French configuration folder. Because French is not the visitor’s language, ATG Search skips immediately to English for which the visitor is a match. ATG Search then checks the search configurations in that branch, stopping at Subscribes to the New York Times because the visitor satisfies all of its requirements.
Likewise, if a site organizes search configurations by language, and one dimension value is a superset of another (en and en_US, for example), placing the search configuration that uses en higher in the tree prevents the en_US search configuration from being used because all site visitors who use en_US also use en.
Had the visitor used any language other than the two identified, the All Others search configuration folder branch would have been traversed. All Others is a dimension value available to both search configurations and search configuration folders to represent visitors for whom none of the other search configurations apply. For example, a visitor who has never identified newspaper preferences on a user profile page or has no recorded purchasing history uses the search configuration with the All Others dimension value.
The ordering principle applies to the All Other dimension as well, so putting a search configuration with All Others at the top of the tree would cause it to be used for every site visitor, thereby negating the other search configurations. For that reason, the search configuration or search configuration folder with the All Others value always appears at the bottom of the tree within a given level.
When Search Configurations and Search Configuration Folders are on the Same Level
Consider a hierarchy that has search configurations and search configuration folders on the same level in the tree:
In this example, Subscribes to Le Monde, Subscribes to the New York Times, and Subscribes to the Wall Street Journal are search configurations because the same settings should be applied to all visitors in these groups regardless of language. Search configurations, when they are on the same level as search configuration folders, always appear at the top of the list, which causes them to be considered first. A visitor who is part of both the Subscribes to the New York Times and News Junkie (English) segments sees search results that coincide with the Subscribes to the New York Times search configuration because it comes first in the list. The only exception is for a search configuration that has a dimension value of All Others, which will always be considered last.
Notice that there’s no search configuration on the same level as a folder with dimension value of All Others. You’re prevented from making this selection because such a search configuration would divert all visitors away from any search configuration or search configuration folder beneath it on the tree.
In short, the top of a given level begins with a group of search configurations followed by search configuration folders and if one has a dimension value of All Others, it appears last in the list.
