# Can I sort a sematic query based on a field containing a value or not?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-sort-a-sematic-query-based-on-a-field-containing-a-value-or-not/383906
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 6, 2025, 10:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-sort-a-sematic-query-based-on-a-field-containing-a-value-or-not/383906 "2025-12-06T10:23:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bwagner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/bwagner)
#### Post date: [December 6, 2025, 10:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-sort-a-sematic-query-based-on-a-field-containing-a-value-or-not/383906/1 "2025-12-06T10:23:05Z")
I am new to elastic an Elasticsearch and I guess this is a fairly simple, beginner type quesation.
I have an index that contains information from websites and pdf documents. The index is used in a chat bot on an a website.
In the results the bot should use the information from both sources but should prefer the content from the website so that it returns the weblink as a source.
The weblink is stored in a separate field and is only field by the websites, for pdf documents the field is empty.
Can I order the query based on this field. More specific I want documents where the link field is filled to be the top results.
Is that possible?
I was looking into query rules but since I don’t know the ids prior to the query, I think they are not the right choice.
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [December 6, 2025, 11:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-sort-a-sematic-query-based-on-a-field-containing-a-value-or-not/383906/2 "2025-12-06T11:37:19Z")
Welcome Benjamin!
Yes. You can do a [bool query](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/query-languages/query-dsl/query-dsl-bool-query), with a should array.
One of the inner should query will be your match query (what the user is looking for)
The other one will be an [exists query](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/query-languages/query-dsl/query-dsl-exists-query).
That way, when the exists query matches (ie, the field is there), the score added by this query will increase the global score.
It will look a bit like this:
```auto
POST _search
{
"query": {
"bool" : {
"should" : [
{ "exists" : { "field" : "url" } },
{ "match" : { "content" : "foo bar baz" } }
]
}
}
}
```
And of course you can replace the match query by a semantic query:
```auto
"semantic": {
"field": "content.semantic",
"query": "foo bar baz"
}
```
HTH