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Your docs make clear that higher ranked pages boost results and that it's possible to give a page any value including a negative number, but it's not clear what the default rank value is for pages that aren't given a hardcoded pageRank? Where do those pages fall between higher & lower ranked pages?

Is the default value 0? 1? Something else?

Also, what's the impact of giving a page a very high number - does it just put it first, or is there a weighted difference when giving a high number? For example, if I rate all other pages in my site with values 1-4, and then rate one page a 5, would there be any difference in the results vs the pages ranked as '4' but with a better match to the search query, if instead of 5, I rated it 100?

Hey!

it's not clear what the default rank value is for pages that aren't given a hardcoded pageRank?

There's no default value, so it defaults to 0.

Where do those pages fall between higher & lower ranked pages?

tldr: search results are sorted by weight (desc), so you can have both boosted and non boosted results.

The weight of each result will be computed for a given query (based on multiple factors: match level, position, etc.) and the pageRank value will be added to this final weight.

You can view the computed weight directly from the dashboard: "ranking criteria" icon bottom right of each record. It should give you an idea of what pageRank value is acceptable for you case.

Also, what's the impact of giving a page a very high number - does it just put it first, or is there a weighted difference when giving a high number? For example, if I rate all other pages in my site with values 1-4, and then rate one page a 5, would there be any difference in the results vs the pages ranked as '4' but with a better match to the search query, if instead of 5, I rated it 100?

Yes, if you provide a huge pageRank, there's many chances that this record will always be first, no matter what the query is.

To come back on the weight answer above, DocSearch extracts records hierarchically (to try to match a page structure), so the weight is also computed on which level matches. Unless you want to promote a/many page(s), I would not recommend providing a huge value, as it might impact the search experience.

Thanks Clement,

This explanation was super helpful! Suggest adding this information to the documentation for this attribute :-)

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On Sun, 18 Sept 2022 at 21:57, Clément Vannicatte @.***> wrote:

Hey!

it's not clear what the default rank value is for pages that aren't given a hardcoded pageRank?

There's no default, which means it's 0.

Where do those pages fall between higher & lower ranked pages?

tldr: search results are sorted by weight (desc), so you can have both boosted and non boosted results.

The weight of each result will be computed for a given query (based on multiple factors: match level, position, etc.) and the pageRank value will be added to this final weight.

You can view the computed weight directly from the dashboard https://www.algolia.com/apps/YOUR_APP_ID/dashboard: "ranking criteria" icon bottom right of each record. It should give you an idea of what pageRank value is acceptable for you case.

Also, what's the impact of giving a page a very high number - does it just put it first, or is there a weighted difference when giving a high number? For example, if I rate all other pages in my site with values 1-4, and then rate one page a 5, would there be any difference in the results vs the pages ranked as '4' but with a better match to the search query, if instead of 5, I rated it 100?

Yes, if you provide a huge pageRank, there's many chances that this record will always be first, no matter what the query is.

To come back on the weight answer above, DocSearch extracts records hierarchically (to try to match a page structure), so the weight is also computed on which level matches. Unless you want to promote a/many page(s), I would not recommend providing a huge value, as it might impact the search experience.

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@jackieros Well, a little later than you probably imagined, but I have added this great info from shortcuts into our docs: https://docsearch.algolia.com/docs/record-extractor/#boost-search-results-with-pagerank. Thank you for the suggestion!