# Boost, scoring and phrase search **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [June 20, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664 "2011-06-20T21:15:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a4c791/32.png) [@Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Yannick_Smits_2)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/1 "2011-06-20T21:15:25Z")
- ``` Can we have query time index boost levels? ``` - ``` How would you implement formatting based boosting. For instance ``` have bold, italic and uppercase texts (HTML) have higher scores? - ``` I noticed phrase searches actually don't limit the search results ``` in to matches in 1 phrase. So when searching for "fear of dark" it will also match if fear and dark appear in different sentences ("Then it became dark. He had fear of cats."). Is there a way to force the result to be in the same sentence? - ``` Is proximity of words also taken into account when doing a ``` multi-word phrase search (the closer words appear the higher the scoring?) Thanks, Yannick ---
**Author:** ![Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a4c791/32.png) [@Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Yannick_Smits_2)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/2 "2011-06-22T06:50:51Z")
Could somebody help me with my Monday questions? Even if you only know the answer to 1 of them it would be very helpful. Thanks, Yannick From: Yannick Smits [[mailto:mailinglists@goyaweb.nl](mailto:mailinglists@goyaweb.nl)] Sent: maandag 20 juni 2011 23:15 To: [users@elasticsearch.com](mailto:users@elasticsearch.com) Subject: boost, scoring and phrase search - ``` Can we have query time index boost levels? ``` - ``` How would you implement formatting based boosting. For instance ``` have bold, italic and uppercase texts (HTML) have higher scores? - ``` I noticed phrase searches actually don't limit the search results ``` in to matches in 1 phrase. So when searching for "fear of dark" it will also match if fear and dark appear in different sentences ("Then it became dark. He had fear of cats."). Is there a way to force the result to be in the same sentence? - ``` Is proximity of words also taken into account when doing a ``` multi-word phrase search (the closer words appear the higher the scoring?) Thanks, Yannick ---
**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 11:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/3 "2011-06-22T11:40:42Z")
Hi Yannick On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 23:15 +0200, Yannick Smits wrote: > - > > ``` > Can we have query time index boost levels? > > ``` Yes. Look at the Query DSL docs - most queries take a 'boost' parameter. > - > > ``` > How would you implement formatting based boosting. For > > ``` > > instance have bold, italic and uppercase texts (HTML) have higher > scores? I don't think you can (at least not currently) > - > > ``` > I noticed phrase searches actually don’t limit the search > > ``` > > results in to matches in 1 phrase. So when searching for “fear of > dark” it will also match if fear and dark appear in different > sentences (“Then it became dark. He had fear of cats.”). Is there a > way to force the result to be in the same sentence? I think you mean a 'text' query, not a 'text\_phrase' query. A text query will match text that contains the same words. A text\_phrase query will find text that includes exactly the same phrase (ignoring stop words like 'of'). You can set the slop factor for text\_phrase queries so that the words don't have to be right next to each other. > - > > ``` > Is proximity of words also taken into account when doing a > > ``` > > multi-word phrase search (the closer words appear the higher the > scoring?) With the text\_phrase query, and slop, yes: proximity is taken into account. clint ---
**Author:** ![Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a4c791/32.png) [@Yannick\_Smits\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Yannick_Smits_2)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/4 "2011-06-22T13:57:44Z")
Hi Clinton, 1. I had a look at the docs but could not find a way to specify a boost value based on indices the documents are in, at query time, only as a configuration/static ([Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/api/search/index-boost.html)). What am I missing? 2. could you think of a strategy to simulate such a behavior? Like extracting the bold words and saving them with a higher boost to a different field or something without screwing up the highlighting feature? 3. yes, I'm using text\_phrase. But still I would like to know if it is possible to have it look only within the phrase for the specified terms instead of matching over multiple phrases. Thanks, Yannick -----Original Message----- From: Clinton Gormley [[mailto:clinton@iannounce.co.uk](mailto:clinton@iannounce.co.uk)] Sent: woensdag 22 juni 2011 13:41 To: [users@elasticsearch.com](mailto:users@elasticsearch.com) Subject: Re: boost, scoring and phrase search Hi Yannick On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 23:15 +0200, Yannick Smits wrote: > - > > ``` > Can we have query time index boost levels? > > ``` Yes. Look at the Query DSL docs - most queries take a 'boost' parameter. > - > > ``` > How would you implement formatting based boosting. For > > ``` > > instance have bold, italic and uppercase texts (HTML) have higher > scores? I don't think you can (at least not currently) > - > > ``` > I noticed phrase searches actually don’t limit the search > > ``` > > results in to matches in 1 phrase. So when searching for “fear of > dark” it will also match if fear and dark appear in different > sentences (“Then it became dark. He had fear of cats.”). Is there a > way to force the result to be in the same sentence? I think you mean a 'text' query, not a 'text\_phrase' query. A text query will match text that contains the same words. A text\_phrase query will find text that includes exactly the same phrase (ignoring stop words like 'of'). You can set the slop factor for text\_phrase queries so that the words don't have to be right next to each other. > - > > ``` > Is proximity of words also taken into account when doing a > > ``` > > multi-word phrase search (the closer words appear the higher the > scoring?) With the text\_phrase query, and slop, yes: proximity is taken into account. clint ---
**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 2:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/5 "2011-06-22T14:23:45Z")
Hi Yannick > 1. I had a look at the docs but could not find a way to specify a > boost value based on indices the documents are in, at query time, only > as a configuration/static > ([Elastic — The Search AI Company | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/api/search/index-boost.html)). What am I missing? The page you link to above does not say that indices\_boost is static - it is a parameter that you can pass to any search query. curl -XGET '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/\_all/\_search?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/_all/_search?pretty=1)' -d ' { "query" : { "match\_all" : {} }, "indices\_boost" : { "index\_foo" : 10, "index\_bar" : 1 } } ' > 1. could you think of a strategy to simulate such a behavior? Like > extracting the bold words and saving them with a higher boost to a > different field or something without screwing up the highlighting > feature? This would require some work on the client side. You could have two fields: 'text' and 'important\_text'. 'text' would contain all of the text, and 'important\_text' just the bits inside the **tags.** Then you can use a bool query to boost anything found in important\_text, but only do the highlighting on the 'text' field. > 1. yes, I'm using text\_phrase. But still I would like to know if it is > possible to have it look only within the phrase for the specified > terms instead of matching over multiple phrases. ES has no concept of sentences. I thought of possibly breaking up the content into individual sentences, eg: ['The quick brown fox', 'jumped over the lazy dog'] but it looks like ES just concatenates these values anyway: # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:35 2011] Protocol: http, Server: 192.168.5.103:9200 curl -XPOST '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/bar?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/bar?pretty=1)' -d ' { "text" : [ "The quick brown fox", "jumped over the lazy dog" ] } ' # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:35 2011] Response: # { # "ok" : true, # "\_index" : "foo", # "\_id" : "-Dt7zDUCQKauV69L\_32w9g", # "\_type" : "bar", # "\_version" : 1 # } # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:49 2011] Protocol: http, Server: 192.168.5.103:9200 curl -XGET '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/\_search?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/_search?pretty=1)' -d ' { "query" : { "text\_phrase" : { "text" : "brown jumped" } } } ' # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:49 2011] Response: # { # "hits" : { # "hits" : , # "max\_score" : null, # "total" : 0 # }, # "timed\_out" : false, # "\_shards" : { # "failed" : 0, # "successful" : 5, # "total" : 5 # }, # "took" : 2 # } # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:54 2011] Protocol: http, Server: 192.168.5.103:9200 curl -XGET '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/\_search?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/foo/_search?pretty=1)' -d ' { "query" : { "text\_phrase" : { "text" : "fox jumped" } } } ' # [Wed Jun 22 16:22:54 2011] Response: # { # "hits" : { # "hits" : [ # { # "\_source" : { # "text" : [ # "The quick brown fox", # "jumped over the lazy dog" # ] # }, # "\_score" : 0.23013961, # "\_index" : "foo", # "\_id" : "-Dt7zDUCQKauV69L\_32w9g", # "\_type" : "bar" # } # ], # "max\_score" : 0.23013961, # "total" : 1 # }, # "timed\_out" : false, # "\_shards" : { # "failed" : 0, # "successful" : 5, # "total" : 5 # }, # "took" : 2 # } ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 4:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/boost-scoring-and-phrase-search/4664/6 "2017-07-06T04:02:56Z")