Faceted search affecting rankings

[norman]

Has anyone here experience different rankings through faceted search?

For example, our query parameter is f.Course|U=yes just to bring back pages in the collection with course metadata value = yes.

When we use the SEO auditor to check a particular page, it's the top ranking result for that collection. However through the faceted search, that same result ranks much lower using the same keyword.

We are finding this a little bit odd and would expect that the page should still be the top ranking. Any ideas?

Thanks.

Our faceted search is based on a metadata however when compared to the SEO auditor, I get quite a different ranking for a particular page.

[plevan]

Hi Norman,

When a facet is applied the overall result set is scoped down before the scores for the various components of the ranking algorithm are calculated. I believe it's not unexpected for the ranking to be affected.

This means some of the components of the score can be affected as the scores relate to the overall set of content in the scoped dataset. SEO auditor is also affected by a number of other factors such as result diversification (e.g. same site suppression) or curator rules which can affect how the items are ranked - this can result in the scores not always decreasing as you go down the ranked order which is quite confusing.

@LukeButters might be able to shed some additional light here as well.