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Adam Greenwell

Tuning the Weighting System

The weighting system is highly configurable. Here's how to tune it for your specific needs.

Current release: 2.2.01

When to Adjust Weights

Increase Title Weight (Default: 10)

Consider increasing if:

  • Your post titles are very descriptive and accurately represent content
  • You want title matches to dominate search results
  • You have well-optimized SEO titles

Recommended range: 8-10

Decrease Title Weight

Consider decreasing if:

  • Your titles are short or generic ("Part 1", "Update #5")
  • You want content matches to have more influence

Recommended range: 4-8

Increase Excerpt Weight (Default: 5)

Consider increasing if:

  • Your excerpts are well-written summaries
  • Excerpts accurately represent post content
  • You want excerpt matches to be more important than content matches

Recommended range: 4-7

Decrease Excerpt Weight

Consider decreasing if:

  • Your excerpts are auto-generated or not representative
  • You want to rely more on titles and content

Recommended range: 1-3

Increase Content Weight (Default: 1)

Consider increasing if:

  • Your content is keyword-rich and well-structured
  • You want content matches to have more influence
  • You have long-form content where keywords appear multiple times

Recommended range: 1-3

Decrease Content Weight

Consider decreasing if:

  • Your content is very long and may have keyword dilution
  • You want to prioritize titles and excerpts

Recommended range: 0-1 (0 disables content indexing)

Taxonomy Weighting Strategy

Category Weighting (Default: 5)

Categories represent broad topic classification. Higher category weights help users find posts by topic.

Recommended range: 3-10

Best for: News sites, blogs with clear categorization

Tag Weighting (Default: 3)

Tags represent specific topics or keywords. Lower than categories but still important for relevance.

Recommended range: 2-5

Best for: Sites with extensive tagging

Custom Taxonomy Weighting

Configure weights for custom taxonomies based on their importance to your content structure.

Examples:

  • WooCommerce product categories might need higher weight than tags
  • Portfolio types might equal category importance
  • Event venues might be lower priority

Recommended range: 1-8

Common Weighting Profiles

These are example weight recipes, not built-in named profiles. Set global field weights under Settings → Lumenare Search → Search Quality. Use Search Profiles to save overrides and assign them independently to full results, live search, blocks, shortcodes, and Ask Site. A profile inherits settings it does not override; assigning one does not analyze content or enable answer placement on another surface.

Profile 1: Title-Focused

Best for SEO-optimized sites with descriptive titles.

Setting Value
Title Weight 10
Excerpt Weight 5
Content Weight 1
Category Weight 4
Tag Weight 2

Use when: Titles are highly descriptive and SEO-optimized.

Profile 2: Balanced (Default)

Good for most sites with varied content.

Setting Value
Title Weight 10
Excerpt Weight 5
Content Weight 1
Category Weight 5
Tag Weight 3

Use when: You want balanced relevance across all content areas.

Profile 3: Content-Rich

Best for long-form content, documentation, and articles.

Setting Value
Title Weight 8
Excerpt Weight 5
Content Weight 3
Category Weight 4
Tag Weight 3

Use when: Content is keyword-rich and well-structured.

Profile 4: Taxonomy-Heavy

Best for heavily categorized sites where organization matters.

Setting Value
Title Weight 8
Excerpt Weight 4
Content Weight 1
Category Weight 8
Tag Weight 5

Use when: Taxonomy organization is crucial for finding content.

Phrase Boost Tuning

The configured multiplier applies when a phrase occurs in both the query and an eligible candidate's title. A full-query substring in the title receives a separate 2× boost instead. These checks cover the top 100 candidates and require at least two retained keywords; they do not boost excerpt/body phrases or create missing candidates.

Increase Phrase Boost Multiplier (Default: 1.5)

Consider increasing if:

  • You have specific important phrases users search for
  • You want exact phrase matches to rank much higher
  • Generic word matches are drowning out specific results

Recommended range: 1.5-3

Decrease Phrase Boost Multiplier

Consider decreasing if:

  • You want more balanced results
  • Phrase matches are over-prioritizing certain content

Recommended range: 1.1-1.5. In 2.2.00, values at or below 1 fall back to 1.5.

Adding Effective Phrases

Good phrase candidates:

  • Product names: "iPhone 15 Pro", "PlayStation 5"
  • Brand names: "Sega Genesis", "Nintendo Switch"
  • Technical terms: "machine learning", "REST API"
  • Multi-word concepts: "climate change", "remote work"

Poor phrase candidates:

  • Single words (tune keyword weights; use synonyms only for equivalent terms)
  • Very common phrases
  • Phrases not actually in your content

Search Intelligence Tuning

Use CTR Opportunities

Search Intelligence compares impressions and clicks for individual result/query pairs. Promote an already-eligible result when it is clearly the right result for an exact query but users keep skipping it.

Use Synonym Drafts

Synonym drafts can be created from zero-result queries and CTR opportunities. Apply a draft when it reflects real editorial language your visitors use; dismiss it when the suggestion would broaden search too much.

Review Remediation Outcomes

After promotions or synonym drafts are applied, the Search ROI summary reports whether CTR improved, zero-result rates dropped, or the action still needs more data. Use that feedback before making broader weight changes.

Tune Click Boost Carefully

Click boost uses query-specific CTR from result impressions first, then falls back to older raw click counts. Start with the default strength and only increase it after Search ROI shows that click behavior is improving relevance.

Audio Attachment Boost

The default audio boost is a small 1.15x lift for posts with audio metadata. Install ListenUp to reveal the Search Quality controls for audio boosting. Adjust the meta keys when a companion plugin stores audio differently, or disable the boost when audio should not influence ranking.

Consider enabling if:

  • Your site has time-sensitive content
  • You want popular searches to influence rankings
  • You have enough search volume to establish trends
Range Effect
0.1-0.5 Subtle boost – stable rankings with slight trending influence
0.5-1.0 Moderate boost – noticeable trending effects
1.0-2.0 Strong boost – trending content significantly prioritized
Range Effect
7-14 days Fast decay – responsive to recent trends (news sites)
30 days Balanced – good for most sites
60-90 days Slow decay – stable trending topics (evergreen content)
Range Effect
2-3 Sensitive – more topics become trending
5-10 Moderate – established trends only
10+ Conservative – only very popular queries

Step-by-Step Tuning Process

For meaning search, first check that ordinary keyword search finds the right content. Search & Answers offers rule-based search understanding without an AI service, and optional meaning reranking with embeddings. Neither promises to retrieve every paraphrase.

Meaning reranking reorders existing keyword candidates: at most 200 posts and 800 passages in 2.2.00, or 20 posts for explicitly enabled live meaning search. If a query has no eligible keyword hits, meaning reranking cannot discover an otherwise missing post. Check indexed fields, synonyms, filters, and the assigned profile first.

Analyze content with a compatible embedding service before testing meaning search. A normal keyword reindex does not create vectors. The default ranking blend is 0.6 lexical / 0.4 semantic; changing that blend does not prepare content or turn on AI answers. Cited excerpts, AI writing, Ask Site placement, and results-page answer cards are separate choices.

Content analysis, uncached query embeddings, and opted-in AI answers can use provider credits. Test a small set of real questions and compare ordinary results, reranked results, citations, and no-answer behavior before expanding usage. See Search & Answers for setup.

1. Start with Defaults

The default weights work well for most sites. Don't change everything at once.

2. Monitor Search Analytics

Check which searches return poor results:

  • Go to Settings → Lumenare Search → Analytics
  • Review zero-result queries
  • Note searches where users click results low in the list

3. Identify Patterns

Ask yourself:

  • Are title matches ranking too high/low?
  • Are content matches overwhelming title matches?
  • Are taxonomy matches helping or hurting?

4. Make Small Adjustments

Change weights by 1-2 points at a time. Large changes make it hard to identify what helped.

5. Reindex After Changes

Positive-to-positive weight changes take effect at search time because the index stores raw occurrence counts. Reindex when enabling a field that had weight 0, adding indexed fields or content types, or bringing stored terms into line with a changed stop-word list:

  1. Go to Index Management tab
  2. Click "Reindex All Content"

6. Test and Iterate

After saving settings and completing any required reindex:

  1. Test real searches from your analytics
  2. Check if problem queries now return better results
  3. Adjust further if needed

7. Monitor Over Time

Continue checking analytics to see if changes improved results. User behavior (clicks, zero-results) tells you if search is working.

Important Notes

Reindexing Required

Reindex when data is missing from the keyword index: for example, after changing a field from weight 0 to a positive value. Fields with zero weight are omitted during indexing. Changing an already-positive weight applies immediately and does not need a reindex.

Changing which fields, post types, or document types are indexed also requires updating the index. Saved stop words immediately affect query matching and highlighting; reindex to synchronize stored terms, especially when restoring a previously excluded word. Embedding analysis is separate from these keyword-index updates.

How: Settings → Lumenare Search → Index Management → Reindex All Content

Relative Weights Matter

The ratio between weights is more important than absolute values.

Configuration A Configuration B
Title: 6 Title: 3
Excerpt: 4 Excerpt: 2
Content: 2 Content: 1

Both configurations give titles 3× the content weight. Their final results can still differ because minimum score thresholds and additive boosts depend on absolute scores.

Test with Real Searches

Use your site's search analytics to identify actual user queries. Test how they rank with different weight configurations rather than guessing.

Quick Reference

Settings That Require Reindex

  • Any field weight changed from 0 to a positive value
  • Indexed custom fields
  • Stop words, to synchronize stored terms or restore previously omitted words
  • Post types
  • Document MIME types

Settings Applied Immediately

  • Changes between positive field weights, including taxonomy and attachment weights
  • Saved stop words for query matching, synonym expansion, and highlighting
  • Match mode (ANY/ALL)
  • Synonyms
  • Search phrases
  • Fuzzy matching
  • Trending boost
  • Highlighting
  • Freshness boost
  • Audio attachment boost
  • Click boost
  • Query promotions
  • Search-profile routing, search behavior, and answer placement (content analysis remains a separate step)

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