Relevancy

Relevancy refers to the accuracy and effectiveness of search results. If search results are almost always appropriate, then they can be considered relevant, and vice versa.

Meilisearch has a number of features for fine-tuning the relevancy of search results. The most important tool among them is ranking rules. There are two types of ranking rules: built-in ranking rules and custom ranking rules.

Each index possesses a list of ranking rules stored as an array in the settings object. This array is fully customizable, meaning you can delete existing rules, add new ones, and reorder them as needed.

Meilisearch uses a bucket sort algorithm to rank documents whenever a search query is made. The first ranking rule applies to all documents, while each subsequent rule is only applied to documents considered equal under the previous rule as a tiebreaker.

The order in which ranking rules are applied matters. The first rule in the array has the most impact, and the last rule has the least. Our default configuration meets most standard needs, but you can change it.

Deleting a rule means that Meilisearch will no longer sort results based on that rule. For example, if you delete the typo ranking rule, documents with typos will still be considered during search, but they will no longer be sorted by increasing number of typos.