Determining Order of FAQs/Entities in Default Search

Search
1

Hey Team,

For Search experiences, what determines the order entities are returned for default search in their verticals? It didn’t seem to be based on entity ID or alphabetically and since there’s no query I don’t think a score to the entities would be calculated. Is it also possible to change this order or influence it?

Best,
Khari

2

Hey Khari,

If you have any default sorting on the vertical, the results will return in that order, e.g. sorting events by date. If you’re sorting by relevance and all results have the same relevance (since there’s no query), the order is random. However, you can change the order with a query rule, even for blank searches.

For example, this is the default search results for the Turtlehead Tacos Community Stories vertical on a blank search:

image
image1249×991 155 KB

I added the following query rule to alphabetize these results by boosting the entities:

{
      "criteria": {
        "searchTermExactlyMatches": "",
        "searchTypes": "VERTICAL",
        "verticalKeys": [
          "community_stories"
        ]
      },
      "actions": [
        {
          "actionType": "BOOST_ENTITIES",
          "entityIds": [
            "CS-1",
            "CS-3",
            "CS-2",
            "CS-4"
          ],
          "verticalKey": "community_stories"
        }
      ],
      "name": "Alphabetize Community Stories for Blank Search"
    }

I then get the following results:
image