Fields that don't match for a particular document just don't contribute to the score. The boost is multiplied into the score calculated for that field and term. So if for doc1 the calculated score is 5 and you boost by 2, the result is 10. If doc2 has a calculated score of 20 and you boost by 1, its score is higher.
For all the messy details, try adding &debug=all&debug.explain.structured = true Best, Erick On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 10:47 AM, Megha Bhandari <mbhanda...@sapient.com> wrote: > Correcting typo in original post and making it a little clearer > > Hi > > Can someone help us understand how null values affect boosting. > > Say we have field_1 (with boost ^10.1) and field_2 (with boost ^9.1). > We search for foo. > Document A : field_1 : does not exist > Field_2 = matches search term > Document B: field_1 = matches search term > Field_2 = empty string. > As per our understanding the result should be Document B, Document A. > However what we are getting is Document A,Document B. > > Below is a detailed description of the above problem with our business use > case and configurations. > > Use case : Promote documents as per following priority of fields ie. Keywords > > meta description > Title > H1 > H2 >H3 > body content > > For this we have indexed the above fields as > <field name="metatag.description" type="text_general" multiValued="false" > indexed="true" stored="true"/> > <field name="metatag.keywords" type="text_general" multiValued="false" > indexed="true" stored="true"/> > <field name="title" type="text_general" multiValued="false" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h1" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h2" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h3" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > > and used the eDisMax query parser and set boosting as > <str name="defType">edismax</str> > <str name="qf"> > metatag.keywords^100.1 metatag.description^50.1 title^20.1 h1^4.7 > h2^3.6 h3^2.5 h4^1.4 id^0.01 _text_^0.001 > </str> > > The above is working fine for documents that have an entry for all fields. > E.g. all pages have keywords, meta description and so on even though the > entry might just be an empty string. So if the search contains pages only the > results are coming fine as per expectation. > > However for documents that don't have keywords ,e.g. all PDFs only have meta > description ,title and _text_, results are skewed. PDFs are coming right at > the top even though we have a page with the search term in keyword field. > > To fix this anomaly we come up with the following boosting ( notice the very > large boost values) > <str name="defType">edismax</str> > <str name="qf"> > metatag.keywords^100000.1 metatag.description^7500.1 title^500.1 > h1^40.7 h2^25.6 h3^15.1 h4^5.4 h5^1.3 h6^1.2 _text_^1.0 > </str> > > I can provide the query debug results for both configurations if required. > > Thanks for any help in understanding this. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Megha Bhandari [mailto:mbhanda...@sapient.com] > Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 11:10 PM > To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org > Subject: Edismax field boosting behavior for null values > > Hi > > Can someone help us understand how null values affect boosting. > > Say we have field_1 (with boost ^10.1) and field_2 (with boost ^9.1). > We search for foo. Document A has field_1(foo match) and field_2(empty) and > Document B has field_2(foo match) but no field_1. > As per our understanding the result should be Document A,Document B. > However what we are getting is Document B,Document A. > > Below is a detailed description of the above problem with our business use > case and configurations. > > Use case : Promote documents as per following priority of fields ie. Keywords > > meta description > Title > H1 > H2 >H3 > body content > > For this we have indexed the above fields as > <field name="metatag.description" type="text_general" multiValued="false" > indexed="true" stored="true"/> > <field name="metatag.keywords" type="text_general" multiValued="false" > indexed="true" stored="true"/> > <field name="title" type="text_general" multiValued="false" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h1" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h2" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > <field name="h3" type="text_general" multiValued="true" indexed="true" > stored="true"/> > > and used the eDisMax query parser and set boosting as > <str name="defType">edismax</str> > <str name="qf"> > metatag.keywords^100.1 metatag.description^50.1 title^20.1 h1^4.7 > h2^3.6 h3^2.5 h4^1.4 id^0.01 _text_^0.001 > </str> > > The above is working fine for documents that have an entry for all fields. > E.g. all pages have keywords, meta description and so on even though the > entry might just be an empty string. So if the search contains pages only the > results are coming fine as per expectation. > > However for documents that don't have keywords ,e.g. all PDFs only have meta > description ,title and _text_, results are skewed. PDFs are coming right at > the top even though we have a page with the search term in keyword field. > > To fix this anomaly we come up with the following boosting ( notice the very > large boost values) > <str name="defType">edismax</str> > <str name="qf"> > metatag.keywords^100000.1 metatag.description^7500.1 title^500.1 > h1^40.7 h2^25.6 h3^15.1 h4^5.4 h5^1.3 h6^1.2 _text_^1.0 > </str> > > I can provide the query debug results for both configurations if required. > > Thanks for any help in understanding this. >
