Influencing scores with query boosts

In the previous chapter, we learned how to check why the search returns a given document and what factors had influence on its position in the result list. When an application grows, the need for improving the quality of search also increases—so-called search experience. We need to gain knowledge about what is more important to the user and to see how users use the search functionality. This leads to various conclusions; for example, we see that some parts of the documents are more important than the others or that particular queries emphasize one field at the cost of others. This is where boosting can be used. In the previous chapters, we've seen some information about boosting. In this chapter, we'll summarize this knowledge and we will show how to use it in practice.

What is boost?

Boost is an additional value used in the process of scoring. We can apply this value to the following:

• Query: This is a way to inform the search engine that the given query...