Ranking Rules are a simple and highly effective way to use your onsite search engine as a conversion-boosting machine, as they influence the sort order of results and the scoring of specific products. A Ranking Rule can demote or boost products based on a specific query or date. You can specify a start and end date to trigger rules during specific periods (for rules that are only required during the holiday season, for example).
Adding new ranking rules
Add a new ranking rule with the yellow Add new rule button. A window will appear where you can fill in the following fields:
Name
Enter a descriptive name for your ranking rule.
Boost condition
Once a rule matches the current query, specific documents have to be targeted. The boost conditions specify which documents will be influenced. You can match documents by text values or numeric values. The last value type supports ranges.
Note: For boost conditions it is important that you copy the exact same value as in your data feed. When the value isn’t the same as in your feed, your rule won’t work.
Set boost level
Next, set the boost level of your rule. How much do you want to promote or demote it?
Set date
If you want to activate your ranking rule only in a specific period, you can specify a start date and an end date.
Query trigger
With this slider, you have two options: all queries (slider off) and specific queries (slider on). Whenever you’re triggering the rule on specific queries, you can use different query notations. These rule matching options give you fine-grained control over which queries trigger your rules. To use a keyword matching option, just add the appropriate punctuation to your keyword. You can set each search-targeted keyword to have one of the following four settings:
- Broad match: red shoe
Allows your rule to trigger on similar phrases and relevant variations - Phrase match: “red shoe“
Allows your rule to trigger for searches that match the exact phrase. - Exact match: [red shoe]
Allows your rule to trigger for searches that match the exact term exclusively. - Negative match: -blue
Ensures your rule doesn’t trigger for any search that includes that term.
Remember to click Save when you’re done.
Conversion tips
- Put emphasis on products that you’ve got on sale or promotion.
- Promote seasonal products or demote out-of-season products.
- Boost your own products (versus third party products) with a promotion rule.
- Boost products you have a high volume of in-stock (and like to sell off).
- Boost product types or brands you won’t be selling much longer.