Question

How can I boost the score for documents in which my query matches a particular field earlier. For example, searching for “super man” should give “super man returns” a higher score than “there is my super man”. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Solved it myself after reading a LOT about this online. What specifically helped me was a reply on nabble which goes like (I used dismax, so explaining that here):

• Create a separate field named say ‘nameString’ which stores the value as "_START_ <actual data>"
• Change the search query to "_START_ <actual query>"
• Add the new field nameString as one of the fields to look in in the query fields param (qf)
• While searching use the parameter pf (phrase field) as the new field nameString with a phrase slop of 1 or 2 (lower values would mean stricter searching)

Your final query params will be something like:

q=_START_ <actual query>
defType=dismax
qf=name nameString /* look in name field as well as nameString field */
pf=nameString /* phrase field in nameString */
ps=2 /* phrase slop */