Boost using caret sign

[Benjamin_Gathmann]

I read on this website https://dzone.com/articles/23-useful-elasticsearch-example-queries that I can use the caret sign ("^") to boost a field in a multi_match query, like so:

GET /bookdb_index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "multi_match": {
      "query": "guide",
      "fields": ["summary", "authors", "publisher", "title^20"]
        }
    }  
}

But this is described nowhere in the Elastic documentation. Does anybody know something about it?

In addition, I noticed that the page on Boosting in the ES guide is very faulty:
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.4/mapping-boost.html

It looks like it's a mix of index and query boosting.
If I find the time, I will correct it and create a PR.

[spinscale (Alexander Reelsen)]

Indeed the boosting is not really explaining in the match or multi match query from a quick peek. There is a small explanation however at https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.4/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#_boosting that also applies to match/multi-match.

Documentation PRs are always appreciated!

[Benjamin_Gathmann]

Thanks!
I saw on Github that the page on Boosting is already fixed in the Master branch, so no PR necessary.