Search boost factors allow you to influence the order of the search results. You can edit the search boost factors to increase or decrease the importance of a resource type, field, or asset type in the search ranking. You can also edit the boost settings.
Note Boosting increases the base score of the search results. It does not set the order of the search results.
Values
The default boost factor for all resource types and fields is 1, with the exception of Name, which has a default value of 3.
The higher the value, the greater the relevance score. Boost factors can also have decimals greater than 0.
Boosting object types
The search boost factor of an object type determines whether the objects of that type are shown higher or lower in the search results if the search text was found in any of its fields. Boosting applies to the following object types:
- Asset
- Community
- Domain
- User
- User group
Search boost factors determine only the relative importance of these 5 object types. They do not apply to the individual resources of a given object type. For example, you can boost the Community object type, but you cannot boost a specific community or any of the subcommunities, domains, or assets in a specific community. Similarly, you can boost the User group object type, but you cannot boost a specific user group or users in a specific user group.
You can use the facets on the Search page to navigate to specific resources.
Suppose that Asset has a search boost factor of 1 and Domain has a search boost factor of 3. If you search for a text that appears in any field of an asset and a domain, the domain is shown higher in the search ranking.
Boosting fields
The search boost factor of a field determines its importance for the search results, regardless of the resource type. The following fields are available for boosting:
- Name
- Comment
- Tag
- <any attribute type>
- <any asset type>
Suppose that the Name field has a search boost factor of 2 and the Tag field has a search boost factor of 0.5. If you search for a text that appears in the Name field and the Tag field of different assets, the asset that contains your search text in the Name field is ranked higher than the asset that contains your search text in the Tag field.
Boosting asset types
The search boost factor by asset type allows you to assign greater importance to specified asset types in the search results.
Suppose that the Business Process asset type has a search boost factor of 5 and the Risk asset type has a search boost factor of 1. If you search for a text that appears in any field of a Business Process asset and a Risk asset, the Business Process asset is shown higher in the search ranking.
When searching for an asset, common asset types usually rank higher in the search results. If, however, you are looking for a less common but important asset type, you can improve its visibility and frequency in the search results by applying an asset boost.