Score Explanation

[Sparky]

Just trying to work out why a search for "Norman Park" on my website returns the Nobby Beach page with a score of 84 and the Norman Park page with a score of 64.

The search results can be seen at http://www.brisbanehairsalons.com.au...&Search=Search

I have weightings set Page Title +5, Filename +2. I have Title of Page, Page Content, Mta Description and Filename selected for indexing.

I have also forced the script to add "" around every search but this should not effect these results.

Thanks for any suggestions

[David]

I agree that at first glance, this seems a bit strange. After you adjusted the weightings did you re-index your site and re-upload the index files? Are you actually indexing the page title and meta data (from the "indexing options" tab)?

Also if you are changing meta data, then re-indexing, you should make sure you have caching turned off (otherwise you might be indexing old copies of the page). You can turn off caching from the general tab of the Zoom configuration window.

Finally, if have you edited our script, and it seems you have, then you might have changed the expected behaviour.

[Sparky]

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I have re-indexed the site after adjusting the ratings and uploaded the files. The options are selected in the indexing options tab.

I haven't changed the pages, just the weightings to see how it would affect the results. Most things seem to work as expected but I have found this issue with "Norman Park". I assume it will happen in other cases I haven't stumbled across yet.

I put back the original search.php script and get the exact same behaviour. Is called search_orig.php so you can see the results at http://www.brisbanehairsalons.com.au...&Search=Search

Is there any tool or any way to find out what things on a page have added to the score. Might be a useful tool to add-on so you can see how weightings affect certain pages. Have the option to select 1 page and show how many times a search term was found and what the score was

[Ray]

I think you have the Content Density setting (on the "Weightings" tab of the Configuration window) set to "Standard adjustment" or "Strong adjustment". This gives priority to smaller pages, in this case, the "Nobby Beach" page was given just enough priority to make it outrank the "Norman Park" page. Normally the difference would not be so significant, but these two pages happen to be on the borderline of what was classified as a "small" or "medium" document, so the effects were more noticable.

Change this to "No adjustment", and you should find the results will be much closer to the behaviour you expected.

This page explains the scoring system in some detail: http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/faq_score.html

[Sparky]

Thanks Ray but unfortunately the Content density is set to standard adjustment

[Sparky]

Sorry, just reread your post.... You have suggested no adjustment. I will test it

[Sparky]

Works fine! Thankyou very much