Search after in elasticsearch must match its sorting parameters in count and order. So I was wondering how to get the score from previous result (example page 1) to use it as a search after for next page.
I faced an issue when using the score of the last document in previous search. The score was 1.0, and since all documents has 1.0 score, the result for next page turned out to be null (empty).
That's actually make sense, since I am asking elasticsearch for results that has lower rank (score) than 1.0 which are zero, so which score do I use to get the next page.
Note:
I am sorting by score then by TieBreakerID, so one possible solution is using high value (say 1000) for score.
What you're doing sounds like it should work, as explained by an Elastic team member. It works for me (in ES 7.7) even with tied scores when using the document ID (copied into another indexed field) as a tiebreaker. It's true that indexing additional documents while paginating will make your scores slightly unstable, but not likely enough to cause a significant problem for an end user. If you need it to be reliable for a batch job, the Scroll API is the better choice.
{
"query": {
...
},
"search_after": [
12.276552,
14173
],
"sort": [
{ "_score": "desc" },
{ "id": "asc" }
]
}
Related
I would like to boost scores of documents based on how "recent" a document is. I am trying to do this using a function_score. Here is an example of me doing this on a field called updated_at:
{
"function_score": {
"boost_mode": "sum",
"functions": [
{
"exp": {
"updated_at": {
"origin": "now",
"scale": "1h",
"decay": 0.01,
},
},
"weight": 1,
}
],
"query": query
},
}
I would expect documents close to the datetime now will have a score closer to 1, and documents closer to scale will have a score closer to decay (as described in the docs). Therefore, I'm using the boost_mode sum, to keep the original document scores, and increase depending on how close to now the updated_at value is. (Also, the query score is useful so I would rather add than multiply, which is the default).
To test this scenario, I create a document (A) that returns a query score of about 2. I then duplicate it (B) and modify the new document's updated_at timestamp to be an hour in the past.
In this scenario, I would expect (A) to have a higher score and (B) to have a lower score. However, when I run this scenario, I get the exact opposite. (B) ends up with a score of 3 and (A) ends up with a score of 2.
What am I misunderstanding here to cause this to happen? And how would I modify my function score to do what I would like?
This turned out to be a a timezone issue.
I ended up using the explain API to look at what was contributing to the score. When doing that, I noticed that the origin set to now was actually in a different timezone to the one I was setting in the documents.
I fixed this by manually providing a UTC timestamp in the elasticsearch query rather than using now as the value.
(If there is a better way to do this, please let me know)
Suppose I have 3 Documents:
A, B, C
All terms are very similar, and internal score is pretty identical
And people searching B more frequently than A and C, but C more frequently than A.
Can I get score to order like B, C, A ?
In the use case you described, you can not change the behaviour of scoring/relevancy computation. There is the possibility of boosting when using e.g. match query to affect scoring when searching for values. But that wouldn't be appropriate since you only want to sort the documents.
So the information about the search frequency has to be a part of the documents themselves, meaning it has to be an own field. Then you can simply add a sort clause like the following
{
"query": {
// your awesome query...
},
"sort": [
{
"search_frequency": {
"order": "desc"
}
},
"_score"
]
}
The challenge in this solution would be to keep the value of the field search_frequency up to date. You can do that via the Update API.
I have an ElasticSearch index with a list of "shops".
I'd like to allow customers to search these shops by both geo_distance (so, search for a point and get shops near that location), and textual match, like matches on shop name / address.
I'd like to get results that match either of these two criteria, and I'd like the order of these results to be a combination of both. The stronger the textual match, and the closer to the point searched, the higher the result. (Obviously, there's going to be a formula to combine these two, that'll need tweaking, not too worried about that part yet).
My issue / what I've tried:
geo_distance is a filter, not a query, so I can't combine both on the query part of the request.
I can use a bool => should filter (rather than query) that matches on either name or location. This gives me the results I want, but not in order.
I can also have _geo_distance as part of a sort clause so that documents closer to the point rank higher.
What I haven't figured out is how I would take the "regular" _score that ElasticSearch gives to documents when doing textual matches, and combine that with the geo_distance score.
By having the textual match in the filter, it doesn't seem to affect the score of documents (which makes sense). And I don't see how I could combine the textual match in the query part and a geo_distance filter so it's an OR rather than an AND.
I guess my best bet would be the equivalent of this:
{
function_score: {
query: { ... },
functions: [
{ geo_distance function },
{ multi_match_result score },
],
score_mode: 'multiply'
}
}
but I'm not sure you can do geo_distance as a score function, and I don't know how to have multi_match_result score as a score function, or if it's even possible.
Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
I'm working with ElasticSearch v1.4, but I can upgrade if necessary.
but I'm not sure you can do geo_distance as a score function, and I don't know how to have multi_match_result score as a score function, or if it's even possible.
You can't really do it in the way that you're asking, but you can do what you want just as easily. For the simpler case, you get scoring just by using a normal query.
The problem with filters is that they're yes/no questions, so if you use them in a function_score, then it either boosts the score or it doesn't. What you probably want is degradation of the score as the distance from the origin grows. It's the yes/no nature that stops them from impacting the score at all. There's no improvement to relevancy implied by matching a filter -- it just means that it's part of the answer, but it doesn't make sense to say that it should be closer to the top/bottom as a result.
This is where the Decay function score helps. It works with numbers, dates, and -- most helpfully here -- geo_points. In addition to the types of data it accepts, it can decay using either gaussian, exponential, or linear decay functions. The one that you want to choose is honestly arbitrary and you should give the one that chooses the best "experience". I would suggest to start with gauss.
"function_score": {
"functions": [
"gauss": {
"my_geo_point_field": {
"origin": "0, 1",
"scale": "5km",
"offset": "500m",
"decay": 0.5
}
}
]
}
Note that origin is in x, y format (due to standard GeoJSON), which is longitude, latitude.
Each one of the values impacts how the score decays based on the graph (taken wholesale from the documentation). If you would use an offset of 0, then the score begins to drop once it's not exactly at the origin. With the offset, it allows it some buffer to be considered just as good.
The scale is directly associated with the decay in that the score will be chopped down by the decay value once it is scale-distance away from the origin (+/- the offset). In my above example, anything 5km from the origin would get half of the score as anything at the origin.
Again, just note that the different types of decay functions change the shape of scoring.
I'd like the order of these results to be a combination of both.
This is the purpose of the bool / should compound query. You get OR behavior with score improvement based on each match. Combining this with the above, you'd want something like:
{
"query": {
"bool": {
"should": [
{
"multi_match": { ... }
},
{
"function_score": {
"functions": [
"gauss": {
"my_geo_point_field": {
"origin": "0, 1",
"scale": "5km",
"offset": "500m",
"decay": 0.5
}
}
]
}
}
]
}
}
}
NOTE: If you add a must, then the should behavior changes from literal OR-like behavior (at least 1 must match) to completely optional behavior (none must match).
I'm working with ElasticSearch v1.4, but I can upgrade if necessary.
Starting with Elasticsearch 2.0, every filter is a query and every query is also a filter. The only difference is the context that it's used in. This doesn't change my answer here, but it's something that may help you in the future in addition to what I say next.
Geo-related performance increased dramatically in ES 2.2+. You should upgrade (and recreate your geo-related indices) to take advantage of those changes. ES 5.0 will have similar benefits!
I've got a bunch of documents from a query which are sorted by a modified date. However I'd like certain documents (identified by a field value) to always return in the top ten results regardless of whether there are ten or more documents with a more recent modified date.
From what I've read about the various ways of sorting in Elasticsearch (score, boost, scripts) I don't think I have any way of determining the actual position of a document in the search results, let alone some way of manipulating the score to push a document into the top ten.
Assuming that you have a field called "important_field" which contains value 1, for documents you in top and say 0 for all other documents, you can use multi field sorting as below
{
"sort": [
{ "important_field": { "order": "desc" }},
{ "modified_date": { "order": "desc" }}
]
}
This way of sorting means it will sort by important_field value and if they are same then will be sorted by modified_date. So all documents with important_field value 1 will come on top and rest will still be sorted by modified_date.
I wonder how Elastic search is sorting (on what field) when no search query is specified (I just filter on documents) and no sort option specified. It looks like sorting is than random ... Default sort order is _score, but score is always 1 when you do not specify a search query ...
You got it right. Its then more or less random with score being 1. You still get consistent results as far as I remember. You have the "same" when you get results in SQL but don't specify ORDER BY.
Just in case someone may see this post even it posted over 6 yrs ago..
When you wanna know how elasticsearch calculate its own score known as _score, you can use the explain option.
I suppose that your query(with filter & without search) might like this more or less (but the point is making the explain option true) :
POST /goods/_search
{
"explain": true,
"query": {
"bool": {
"must": {
"match_all": {}
},
"filter": {
"term": {
"maker_name": "nike"
}
}
}
}
}
As running this, you will notice that the _explaination of each hits describes as below :
"_explanation" : {
"value" : 1.0,
"description" : "ConstantScore(maker_name:nike)",
"details" : [ ]
}
which means ES gave constant score to all of the hits.
So to answer the question, "yes".
The results are sorted kinda randomly because all the filtered results have same (constant) score without any search query.
By the way, enabling an explain option is more helpful when you use search queries. You will see how ES calculates the score and will understand the reason why it returns in that order.
Score is mainly used for sorting, Score is calculated by lucene score calculating using several constraints,For more info refer here .