The weighting system is the core of Lumenare Search's relevance ranking. It combines indexed field weights, multi-pass matching, and optional boost layers to decide which eligible result appears first.
Current release: 2.1.00
How Weights Work
During indexing, Lumenare stores per-field occurrence counts for each term. At search time, those counts are multiplied by their configured weights and by the match-pass multiplier.
| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 10 | Highest default signal for descriptive titles |
| Excerpt | 5 | Medium signal for summaries |
| Content | 1 | Baseline body-content signal |
| Category | 5 | Configured through taxonomy weights |
| Tag | 3 | Configured through taxonomy weights |
| Author | 2 | Author display-name matches |
| Custom fields | 3 | Only configured meta keys are indexed |
| Attachment content | 1 | Only used when document indexing is enabled |
Setting a field weight to 0 excludes that field from indexing and scoring.
Match Passes
Lumenare searches the inverted index in progressively broader passes:
| Pass | Match Type | Default Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Exact term | Term equals the indexed term | 10x |
| Prefix | Indexed term starts with the query term | 5x |
| Suffix | Reversed-term lookup for suffix matches | 2x |
| Fuzzy | Levenshtein typo tolerance, when enabled | 2x |
Earlier passes win. If a post matches in the exact pass, later prefix/suffix/fuzzy passes do not replace that score for the same post.
When match mode is All, exact/prefix/suffix passes require every query term to match before a post joins the candidate set.
Boost Pipeline
After the base score is computed, optional ranking layers can adjust the score:
- Synonyms add scaled exact-match scores for configured synonym groups.
- Trending boosts queries that have become popular recently.
- Phrase boosting boosts title-adjacent full-query matches and configured phrases.
- Freshness gives newer or recently updated content a configurable lift.
- Audio attachment boost gives posts with audio metadata a small lift by default.
- Click boost uses query-specific CTR from impressions/clicks, falling back to raw clicks when needed.
- Post-type weights can emphasize or soften whole content types.
- Query promotions boost already-eligible results for exact queries from Search Intelligence actions.
The minimum relevance threshold is applied after these boosts.
Example
A post titled "WordPress Security Best Practices" with category "Security" and tag "WordPress" will score strongly for wordpress security because both terms appear in the title, one appears in the tag, and one appears in the category.
With default field weights, the title matches dominate the base score. If the full phrase appears in the title, the phrase boost can lift it further. If the post was recently updated, the freshness boost can also help it win close ties.
Sorting
Relevance is the default order. The results filters also let visitors choose:
- Newest first (
date_desc) - Oldest first (
date_asc)
When relevance remains selected, date can still act as a secondary tie-breaker through the configured secondary sort.
Next Steps
Ready to optimize your weights? Continue to the Tuning Guide →