Sort my Sites By Rank (using the Popularity Ranking model) inside my content search web part? what are the factors which affect the Rank

Question

I am working on a SharePoint on-premises farm. and i have added a content search web-part, which will show sub-sites for my site collection. now inside the sort i chose to sort by Rank as follow:-

But i am bit confused on what are the factors which affect the sites rank? so which site will be shown first and which site will be shown last ? Thanks

Answer 1

If you want to create a custom ranking model for the default search results, we recommend that you install the SharePoint Server 2013 cumulative update package published on August 13, 2013. This cumulative update includes two new ranking models, one of which is Search Ranking Model with Two Linear Stages. If you use a copy of the Search Ranking Model with Two Linear Stages as the base model for your custom ranking model, it will be easier to re-tune and customize your ranking model.

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You can read more about how to create, deploy and use a custom ranking model in the article Customizing ranking models to improve relevance in SharePoint 2013 on MSDN.

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