How ranking works

Relevance

For multi-word searches, pages matching more query terms are favored.

Exact title and phrase matches receive strong boosts, followed by title terms, headings, descriptions and URL matches. MySQL full-text relevance contributes to the score.

Source priority

The source Priority weight is applied on a compressed scale. It can influence ranking without completely overpowering textual relevance.

Diversity

After relevance scoring, the diversity setting can reduce repeated results from the same source so a useful multi-source index does not become several pages from one website.

Singular and plural searches

DoorFall includes query handling intended to make common singular/plural variations more useful.