Hints and tips for improving quality of Portal Search results

1. Use the Suggested Links portlet

   Use the Suggested Links portlet to ensure that a specific document is listed at the beginning of a set of search results. When a site visitor runs a search, the Suggested Links portlet displays the documents that are tagged with the same keywords from the search. To edit the keywords for Suggested Links, complete the following steps:

   1. Log in to WebSphere Portal as an administrator and navigate to the Search Center.

   2. Select Edit keywords for Suggested Links for the document to edit.

   3. Specify what tags to associate with that specific document.

   4. Click Save.

   The keywords specified are now associated with that item. If a site visitor searches for any of those keywords associated with that specific document, that document displays as a link in the Suggested Links portlet.

2. Change the default search operator from "Or" to "And"

   When a site visitor enters more than one search term, the Portal search engine applies a logical Or operator as a default. In order for a document to display in the search results list, the document must have only one of those search terms. However, search engines such as Google often use And as the default search operator. Using And as the default search operator means that all of the terms used in the search query must be found in each of the returned documents. See Search service configuration parameters.

3. Apply boost factors to specific metadata fields

   When a site visitor runs a search, any values from metadata fields such as title, description, or keywords are automatically added to the generic content field in the search index. The values in these fields contribute equally to relevance calculation for any qualifying documents returned in the search results list. Use the search service configuration parameter boostingSettings to give extra weight to specified metadata fields, such as title or description. We can also use boostingSettings to specify how much extra weight specified metadata fields receive. See Search service configuration parameters

Parent Hints and tips for using Portal Search

Related reference:

Search service configuration parameters

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Improving search quality in Portal Search