Boost and bury search results

  • Updated

This article provides general descriptions and instructions for how to boost and/or bury search results. For more detailed descriptions and explanations on the impact of boosting and burying, review the Understanding Elasticsearch Ranking article.

General descriptions

Administrators can boost or bury particular product searches, depending on various business requirements. Boosting and burying can be adjusted in the following areas:

Field boosting

Fields can be included or excluded from the index to make them queryable on the storefront. Adjust their boost value to increase or decrease the rank of search results based on what fields the query matches.

Fields with search type of Content and Category are only used for results within autocomplete and will not influence product search results.

Configured Commerce creates search boost records when you create attribute types and mark them as queryable or boostable. It feeds and populates the field boosting table with the attributes you create once you enable them in the field boost area. You should add a check to the nightly maintenance job to re-sync attributes to ensure they show in search boost records.

You must run the nightly maintenance job for attributes to show in the field boosting section in the Admin Console.

Query boosting

Query Boosting uses different criteria to find matches in the indexed fields when users search on the storefront. Adjust the boost value to increase or decrease the rank of search results based on the type of query that found the match.

Product boosting

Products can be boosted and buried across all websites or categories where they appear. A positive or negative value is set for a particular product. This value is added to the organic search score and raises or lowers the product based on where the new boosted value sorts numerically in the result set.

Category boosting

Category boosting boosts all products in a specific category instead of boosting a product individually. This boost value combines with other product boost values to deliver the final result.

If a category is in a multi-level hierarchy, ensure the boosting value is entered on the child category instead of the parent category. Values entered on parent categories do not boost products, as there are no products assigned to parent categories.

Sponsored product

Designate a product as Sponsored to ensure it appears at the top of all website searches regardless of the product's boosting value. Administrators can select how many sponsored products are present with each search.

Purchase history

When you enable the setting to boost search results by purchase history, the system captures and indexes customer purchase history data. After you rebuild the product search index, all products included in orders for a customer bill-to, within the values set on the Frequently Purchased Threshold and the Lookback Months for Purchase History Boosting settings, are flagged as frequently purchased.

All products included in orders for a customer bill-to at least once, but less than the values set on the Frequently Purchased Threshold and Lookback Months for Purchase History Boosting settings, are flagged as less frequently purchased.

When customers search for products on your website, the system will boost any product flagged as frequently purchased for the current bill-to customer based on the Boost Amount for Frequently Purchased Products setting. They system will also boost (or bury) any products flagged as less frequently purchased based on the Boost Amount for Less Frequently Purchased Products setting.

How to boost and bury

Field and query boosting

  1. Go to Marketing > Search > Select either Field or Query Boosting.
  2. Click Edit for the desired field.
  3. Adjust the Boost Value.

    The Boost Value is a multiplier applied to search scores for matches on the field or query. A number greater than 1 will boost the result and a number less than 1 will bury the result. (range of 0.0-100.0) Boost values less than 1 are displayed in RED to indicate a negative impact and any value of 1 or greater is displayed in GREEN to show a positive impact.

    New fields cannot be added to Field Boosting. The system is limited to the fields included in the list, as well as custom properties. Custom properties appear in Field boosting automatically. Select the Show Non-Queryable Fields toggle to view any field not currently indexed; custom properties may appear here instead of in the main list, as they are not indexed by default.

Product boosting

  1. Go to Marketing > Search > Product Boosting.
  2. Click Editon the selected Product.
  3. Select the Yes or No toggle to indicate if the Product is sponsored or not.

    Sponsored search allows merchandisers to guarantee an item appears at the top of the search results page.

  4. Enter the Search Boost value.
  5. Click Save.

Category boosting

  1. Go to Marketing > Search > Category Boosting.
  2. Click Editon the selected Category.
  3. Enter the Category Search Boost value and/or the Product Search Boost value.
  4. Click Save.

Purchase history boosting

  1. Go to Administration > System > Settings.
  2. Search for Enable Boosting by Purchase History.
  3. Toggle the Enable Boosting by Purchase History to YES. If Yes, products that have been purchased within a defined lookback period are boosted in search results. Default value: No.
  4. Set the value for Lookback Months for Purchase History Boosting. This is the customer purchases within this number of months are used to identify products to boost based on purchase history. Increasing this value increases the time it takes to rebuild the search index. Default value: 6.
  5. Set the value for Frequently Purchased Threshold. This is the number of times a customer must have purchased a product within the defined lookback months to consider it frequently purchased for boosting. Default value: 3.
  6. Set the value for Boost Amount for Frequently Purchased Products. This is the multiplier applied to search result scoring for products that have been purchased more than the frequently purchased threshold. This value is included with the values for matches for all indexed fields and other boosting options to determine the Elasticsearch score and search rankings. Default value: 3.
  7. Set the Boost Amount for Less Frequently Purchased Products. This is the
  8. Set the Allow Filtering for Previously Purchased Products toggle to YES or NO. If Yes, users can filter search results or category product lists to only see products that they have previously purchased, based on data available in the order history table. Default value: Yes.
  9. Click Save.