Elastic Search - weighting base on an attribute - elasticsearch

Question

Is there a way in Elastic Search to weight results base on an attribute other than the one used for the search query. For example, we search the field 'name', but all documents that have 'with_pictures' attributed to true weighted higher.

Answer 1

You can use boost on individual fields, that will be boosted automatically — count more towards the relevance score — at query time, with the boost parameter
Adding working example with index data, mapping and search query
Index mapping:
{
"mappings": {
"properties": {
"with_pictures": {
"type": "boolean",
"boost": 2
},
"name": {
"type": "keyword"
}
}
}
}
Index data:
{
"name": "A",
"with_pictures": false
}
{
"name": "A",
"with_pictures": true
}
{
"name": "B",
"with_pictures": true
}
Search Query:
{
"query": {
"bool": {
"minimum_should_match": 1,
"should": [
{
"bool": {
"should": [
{
"term": {
"name": "A"
}
},
{
"term": {
"with_pictures": true
}
}
]
}
}
]
}
}
}
Search Result:
"hits": [
{
"_index": "fd_cb1",
"_type": "_doc",
"_id": "1",
"_score": 1.4100108,
"_source": {
"name": "A",
"with_pictures": true
}
},
{
"_index": "fd_cb1",
"_type": "_doc",
"_id": "3",
"_score": 0.9400072,
"_source": {
"name": "B",
"with_pictures": true
}
},
{
"_index": "fd_cb1",
"_type": "_doc",
"_id": "2",
"_score": 0.4700036,
"_source": {
"name": "A",
"with_pictures": false
}
}
]
Score of documents satisfying both the conditions of name and with_properties is having the highest score. But the document having name: B and with_pictures: true have higher score than name: A and with_pictures: false( because of the boost applied on the with_pictures
You can also refer function score query that allows you to modify the score of documents that are retrieved by a query.