# How to Boost two fields **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [April 29, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994 "2019-04-29T22:04:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jilusan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jilusan/32/41515_2.png) [@jilusan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jilusan)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/1 "2019-04-29T22:04:50Z")
Hi, I would like to boost 'title' and 'description' fields on query search, and leave all the other fields (I have many) with boost 1. So I did: ``` GET index1/_doc/_search { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "web", "fields": [ "title^4", "description^2" ] } } } ``` Suppose 'web' is in another field than 'title' and 'description', when I do a search , these documents are not listed. Did I do something wrong? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Harwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mark_harwood/32/10538_2.png) [@Mark\_Harwood](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Harwood)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2019, 11:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/2 "2019-05-01T11:51:37Z")
One option would be to use the [copy\_to](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/copy-to.html) mapping option to copy all those other fields to a single field called "everything\_else" and just add that to your list of fields in the above example. This has other benefits - searching across many fields using their own independent indexes often produces counterintuitive results. Lucene likes to pick the bizarrest context for a search term because it likes rarity. Searching for books on "web development" for example would rank the document "author:gary web" first because of the typo for the common name `Webb`. You can see that in this example: ``` DELETE test PUT test { "settings": { "number_of_replicas": 0, "number_of_shards": 1 }, "mappings": { "_doc": { "properties": { "title": { "type": "text" }, "description": { "type": "text" }, "everything_else": { "type": "text" }, "author": { "type": "text", "copy_to":"everything_else" }, "tags": { "type": "keyword", "copy_to":"everything_else" } } } } } POST test/_doc/_bulk { "index":{} } {"title": "web dev", "description":"html,css etc", "author":"gary webb", "tags":["html","css"]} { "index":{} } {"title": "web apps", "description":"tomcat etc", "author":"paul smith", "tags":["tomcat"]} { "index":{} } {"title": "web etiquette", "description":"etiquette", "author":"sue jones", "tags":["morals"]} { "index":{} } {"title": "Cooking", "description":"Asian cuisine", "author":"gary web", "tags":["food"]} GET test/_doc/_search?explain=true { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "web" } } } ``` The solution is to reach for the special `cross_fields` scoring strategy or perhaps more simply to reindex then search the `everything_else` copy\_to field. This blends the stats from author names, titles etc and avoids some of these odd ranking problems. ---
**Author:** ![jilusan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jilusan/32/41515_2.png) [@jilusan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jilusan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2019, 1:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/3 "2019-05-01T13:20:17Z")
Thanks for your solution. But how to boost title and description fields? When I try: ``` GET test/_doc/_search?explain=true { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "web", "fields": [ "title^4", "description^2" ] } } } ``` I get 3 for total of documents searched. And I would like to have 4 instead. ``` { "took" : 2, "timed_out" : false, "_shards" : { "total" : 1, "successful" : 1, "skipped" : 0, "failed" : 0 }, "hits" : { "total" : 3, "max_score" : 1.347925, "hits" : [.... ``` . Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Harwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mark_harwood/32/10538_2.png) [@Mark\_Harwood](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Harwood)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2019, 1:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/4 "2019-05-01T13:50:31Z")
> [@jilusan](#): > > But how to boost title and description fields? They already are in your example? > [@jilusan](#): > > I get 3 for total of documents searched. And I would like to have 4 instead. Don't forget to add the "everything\_else" field with the lower boost: ``` GET test/_doc/_search { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "web", "fields": [ "title^4", "description^2", "everything_else^1" ] } } } ``` ---
**Author:** ![jilusan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jilusan/32/41515_2.png) [@jilusan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jilusan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/5 "2019-05-01T14:39:03Z")
I found another solution which gives me the solution: ``` GET test/_doc/_search?explain=true { "query": { "bool": { "must": { "query_string": { "query": "web" } }, "should": [ { "query_string": { "query": "web", "fields": [ "title^4", "description^2", ] } } ] } } } ``` ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Harwood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mark_harwood/32/10538_2.png) [@Mark\_Harwood](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Harwood)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2019, 2:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/6 "2019-05-01T14:52:17Z")
It may work with these 4 example docs but the more docs you add the rarer that `author:web` term becomes. The rarer it becomes the higher it scores and at some point you may see that the typo `author:web` ranks higher than your attempts to boost titles and descriptions. Your boosts and IDF (term rarity) are _both_ factors in ranking. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 3:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-boost-two-fields/178994/7 "2019-05-29T15:01:34Z")
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