Chapter 7. Shaping the relevance function
This chapter covers
- Bringing up relevant content through boosting
- Knowing when to use different forms of boosting
- Improving the ranking of popular or recent content
- Filtering out irrelevant or noisy content from search results
- Stoking your own creative uses of the search engine’s querying features
As a relevance engineer, you tailor your users’ search experience to their many unspoken ranking expectations. Unpacking, understanding, and finally implementing these expectations are key parts of your job. For example, almost everyone has a sense that a news search should show up-to-date articles about breaking events. Or that a restaurant search shouldn’t take into account only the user’s query but also the proximity of that user to the restaurant. Your search will probably have unique ranking needs that go beyond text matching. For instance, what if you’re building a local news search? Should it focus on both proximity and freshness? Or what about a global restaurant search for the jet-setting crowd? Should it focus on cities with major airports?