Search

Why do answers that contain aliases show higher at the top of a search results report?

Environment:

All versions not using Knowledge Advanced search.

Resolution:

To remove the search weight added by alias words, the aliases must be removed from the alias list.  Then the answers using these words must have the alias word added to the text of the answer so that they still appear in search results.

Cause:

Our search algorithm adds weight to answers when an aliased word is searched, which may cause answers with the alias to score very high when compared to a word with even more frequent use of the alias.

This functionality occurs even when all the search weight configurations are set to default:

SRCH_KEY_WEIGHT,
SRCH_SUBJ_WEIGHT,
SRCH_DESC_WEIGHT,
SRCH_BODY_WEIGHT,
SRCH_ATTACH_WEIGHT,
SRCH_PROD_WEIGHT and
SRCH_CAT_WEIGHT.

For more information on weighting and the above settings, refer to the following answers:
Affecting the weight used with search results and
Comparing the weight, score, and computed score