Boosting rules do not work in Sitecore Search

Question

I am trying to configure a boosting rule for my Search Results widget. The rule should boost documents with a specific value in one of the attribute. I have made this attribute available for boosting rules and added a boost rule for documents with the Offer equal to true.

Here is how my widget variation looks like in CEC:

and this is how the boost rule is configured:

When I try to get search results using React SDK or when I test this widget in the API Explorer, Sitecore Search does not apply any boosting and the documents that should be boosted do not appear at the top of the list.

Does boosting require any additional configuration? Have I missed any steps?

Answer 1

In order to start seeing boosted documents at the top of your search results, you should allow specific slots to display boosted items. Follow the steps below to mark slots as "boosted":

1. Go to the widget in CEC and select a widget variation.
2. In the widget variation rules, go the Strategy section (see the magic wand icon) and select the Slots tab:
3. For the first several slots, click the icon in the top right corner of each slot and switch it from Personalized to Boost:

Note: when we boost something under the Slots tab, we are not boosting specific documents, but instruct Sitecore Search to use slot #1, slot #2, slot #3, etc. for displaying boosted items according to the boosting rules. CEC UI may be slightly confusing here because the Slots tab shows actual documents from the index rather than generic boxes/placeholders, and it may feel like we are boosting specific items but it's not the case.