Boosting a TermWhen search results are presented, they are sorted by relevance value, which is calculated by the search engine. To boost a term use the caret, '^', symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.
Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for 3g vodafone
and you want the term '3G' to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:
3g^4 vodafone
This will make documents with the term '3G' appear more relevant. You can also boost phrase terms as in the example:
"vodafone 3g"^4 "vodafone ceo"
By default, the boost factor is 1. Although, the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (i.e. 0.2).
|