# Mixing/Alternating Query Results
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 30, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748 "2017-03-30T21:00:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@David\_Klebanoff](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/David_Klebanoff)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748/1 "2017-03-30T21:00:10Z")
Suppose you had documents that fall into distinct categories: A, B, C, D, E, and F. Is it possible to make a query, such that the results are sorted in such a way that they are mixed/alternated evenly across these categories. For example, suppose your query had a boolean filter selecting a subset of the categories:
```
{
"size" : 10,
"query" {
"bool" : {
"must" : [
{ "term" : {"title" : "foo"}}
]
"should" : [
{ "term" : {"category" : "A"}},
{ "term" : {"category" : "B"}},
{ "term" : {"category" : "C"}}
]
}
}
}
```
Is it possible to generate results that look like:
A,A,B,B,C,C,A,A,B,B
---
### Author:  [@Igor\_Motov](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Igor_Motov)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2017, 11:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748/2 "2017-03-30T23:53:04Z")
You can use [Multi Search](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.3/search-multi-search.html) to perform 3 separate searches (one in each category) and then interlace the results on your application side before displaying them to the user.
---
### Author:  [@David\_Klebanoff](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/David_Klebanoff)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748/3 "2017-03-31T00:20:42Z")
Thanks for the suggestion Igor. It certainly beats having the network overhead of X individual searches, which is nice, but it still isn't quite what I'm looking for. Scaling issues aside, the multi search results wouldn't paginate properly as well. A deal breaker for my intended use case.
Still looking for a solution should one exist.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mixing-alternating-query-results/80748/4 "2017-04-28T00:20:57Z")
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